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y<* A’ 



THE HAND ON 
'-"THE LATCH ■* 

Wary Cholmondeley. 


1909^^* 

W DODD, MEAD^ 
& CoMPANYINEW YORK 


Copyright, 1903, by 
New York Herald Company 

Copyright, 1907, by 
The Pearson Publishing Company 

Copyright, 1908, by 

The Metropolitan Magazine Company 

Copyright, 1909, by 
Dodd, Mead and Company 


Published, March, 1909 


LJ3RARY of CONGRESS 
Two Cooies Received 

MAH 31 1009 

L Copyright Entry 

Wo*) 

CLAS3 XXa NOi 














MSSWi 



PREFACE 

I HAVE been writing books for five-and-twenty years, 
novels of which I believe myself to be the author in 
spite of the fact that I have been assured over and over 
again that they are not my own work. When I have on 
several occasions ventured to claim them, I have seldom 
been believed, which seems the more odd as, when others 
have claimed them, they have been believed at once. 
Before I put my name to them they were invariably consid- 
ered to be, and reviewed as, the work of a man ; and for 
years after I had put my name to them various men have 
been mentioned to me as the real author. 

1 remember once, when I was very young and shy, how 
at one of my first London dinner-parties a charming elderly 
man discussed one of my earliest books with such appre- 
ciation that I at last remarked that I had written it myself. 
If I had looked for a surprised flash of delight at the fact 
that so much talent was palpitating in white muslin beside 
him, I was doomed to be disappointed. He gravely and 
gently said, “ I know that to be untrue,” and the conversa- 
tion was turned to other subjects. 

One man did indeed actually announce himself to be the 
author of u Red Pottage,” in the presence of a large num- 
ber of people, including the late Mr. William Sharp, who 
related the occurrence to me. But the incident ended un- 
comfortably for the claimant, which one would have thought 
he might have foreseen. 

But whether my books are mine or not, still whenever 
one of them appears the same thing happens. I am pressed 

[vii] 













Preface 

to own that such-and-such a character “ is taken from So- 
and-so.” I have not yet yielded to these exhortations to 
confession, partly, no doubt, because it would be very 
awkward for me afterwards if I owned that thirty different 
persons were the one and only original of “ So-and-so.” 

My character for uprightness (if I ever had one) has 
never survived my tacit, or in some cases emphatic, refusal 
to be squeezed through the w clefts of confession.” 

It is perhaps impossible for those who do not write fic- 
tion to form any conception how easily an erroneous idea 
gains credence that some one has been u put in a book ” ; 
or if the idea has once been entertained, how impossible it 
is to eradicate it. 

Looking back over a string of incidents of this kind in 
my own personal experience, covering the last five-and- 
twenty years, I feel doubtful whether I shall be believed if 
I instance some of them. They seem now, after the lapse 
of years, frankly incredible, and yet they were real enough 
to give me not a little pain at the time. It is the fashion 
nowadays, if one says anything about oneself, to preface 
it by the pontifical remark that what one writes is penned 
for the sake of others, to save them, to cheer them, etc., 
etc. This, of course, now I come to think of it, must be 
my reason also for my lapse into autobiography. I see now 
that I only do it out of tenderness for the next generation. 
Therefore, young writers of the future, now on the playing 
fields of Eton, take notice that my heart yearns over you. 
If, later on, you are harrowed as I have been harrowed, 
remember u J’ai passe par la” 

Observe the prints of my goloshes on the steep ascent, and 
take courage. And if you are perturbed as I have been per- 

[ viii ] 















Preface 

turbed, let me whisper to you the exhortation of the bankrupt 
to the terrestrial globe, “ Never you mind. Roll on.” 

When I first took a pen into my youthful hand, I lived in 
a very secluded part of the Midlands, and perhaps, my little 
world being what it was, it was inevitable that the originals 
of my characters, especially the tiresome ones, should be 
immediately identified with the kindly neighbours within 
a five-mile radius of my paternal Rectory. Five miles 
was about the utmost our little pony could do. It was 
therefore obviously impossible that I could be acquainted 
with any one beyond that distance. And from first to last, 
from that day to this, no one leading a secluded life has 
been so fatuous as to believe that my characters were evolved 
out of my inner consciousness. u After all, you must own 
you took them from some one” is a phrase which has long 
lost its novelty for me. I remember even now my shocked 
astonishment when a furious neighbour walked up to me 
and said, “ We all recognised Mrs. Alwynn at once as 

Mrs. and we all say it is not in the least like her” 

It was not, indeed. There was no shadow of resem- 
blance. Did Mrs. , who had been kind to me from a 

child, ever hear that report, I wonder ? It gave me many 
a miserable hour, just when I was expanding in the sun- 
shine of my first favourable reviews. 

When I was still quite a beginner, Mrs. Clifford pub- 
lished her beautiful and touching book, u Aunt Anne.” 

There was, I am willing to believe, — it is my duty to 
believe something , — a faint resemblance between her w Aunt 
Anne ” and an old great-aunt of mine, u Aunt Anna Ma- 
ria,” long since dead, whom I had only seen once or twice 
when I was a small child. 

[«] 


















Preface 

The fact that I could not have known my departed rela- 
tion did not prevent two of my cousins, elderly maiden 
ladies who had had that privilege, from writing to me in 
great indignation at my having ventured to travesty my old 
aunt. They had found me out (I am always being found 
out), and the phials of their wrath were poured out over 
me. 

In my whilom ignorance, in my lamblike innocence of 
the darker side of human nature, I actually thought that a 
disclaimer would settle the matter. 

When has a disclaimer ever been of any use ? When 
has it ever achieved anything except to add untruthfulness 
to my other crimes ? Why have I ever written one, after 
that first disastrous essay, in which I civilly pointed out 
that not I but Mrs. Clifford, the well-known writer, was 
the author of “ Aunt Anne.” 

They replied at once to say that this was untrue, that I, 
and I alone, could have written it. 

I showed my father the letter. 

The two infuriated ladies were attached to my father, 
and had known him for many years as a clergymen and a 
rural dean of unblemished character. He wrote to them 
himself to assure them that they had made a mistake, that 
I was not the author of the obnoxious work. 

But the only effect his letter had on their minds was a 
pained uprootal of their respect and long affection for him. 
And they both died some years later, and (presumably) 
went up to heaven convinced of my guilt, in spite of the 
unscrupulous parental ruridecanal effort to whitewash me. 

Long afterwards I mentioned this incident to Mrs. 
Clifford, but it did not cause her surprise. She had had 

[*] 















Preface 

her own experiences. She told me that when u Aunt 
Anne ” appeared she had many letters from persons with 
whom she was unacquainted, reproaching her for having 
portrayed their aunt. 

The reverse of the medal ought perhaps to be mentioned. 
So primitive was the circle in which my youth was passed 
that an adverse review, if seen by one of the community, 
was at once put down to a disaffected and totally unedu- 
cated person in our village. 

A witty but unfavourable criticism in Punch of my first 
story was always believed by two ladies in the parish to 
have been penned by one of the village tradesmen. It was 
in vain I assured them that the person in question could not 
by any possibility be on the staff of Punch . They only 
shook their heads, and repeated mysteriously that they u had 
reasons for knowing he had written it.” 

When we moved to London, I hoped I might fare 
better. But evidently I had been born under an unlucky 
star. The u Aunt Anne ” incident proved to be only the 
first playful ripple which heralded the incoming of the 
u Breakers of the boundless deep.” 

After the publication of “ Red Pottage ” a storm burst 
respecting one of the characters — Mr. Gresley — which 
even now I have not forgotten. The personal note was 
struck once more with vigour, but this time by the clerical 
arm. I was denounced by name from a London pulpit. 
A Church newspaper which shall be nameless suggested 
that my portrait of Mr. Gresley was merely a piece of spite 
on my part, as I had probably been jilted by a clergyman. I 
will not pretend that the turmoil gave me unmixed pain. 
If it had, I should have been without literary vanity. But 

[»] 
















^ Preface V 



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when a witty bishop wrote to me that he had enjoined on 


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his clergy the study of Mr. Gresley as a Lenten penance, it 



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was not possible for me to remain permanently depressed. 


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The character was the outcome of long, close observation 





of large numbers of clergy, but not of one particular clergy- 


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man. Why then was it so exactly like individual clergy- 



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men that I received excited or enthusiastic letters from the 


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parishioners of I dare not say how many parishes, affirming 





that their vicar (whom I had never beheld) and he alone 



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could have been the prototype of Mr. Gresley ? I was fre- 




quently implored to go down and u see for myself.” Their 



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most adorable platitudes were chronicled and sent up to me 


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till I wrung my hands because it was too late to insert 


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them in “ Red Pottage.” 1 For they all fitted Mr. Gresley 


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like a glove, and I should certainly have used them if it had 


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been possible, and, as has been well said, “ There is no 



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copyright in platitudes.” They are part of our goodly her- 


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itage. And though people like Mr. Gresley and my aca- 


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demic prig Wentworth have in one sense made a particular 


a 

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field of platitude their own, by exercising themselves con- 



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tinually upon it, nevertheless we cannot allow them to warn 


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us off as trespassers, or permit them to annex or enclose 



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common land, the property and birthright of the race. 



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Young men fresh from public schools also informed me 


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that Mr. Gresley was the facsimile of their tutor, and of no 





one else. I was at that time unacquainted with any school- 



is: 


masters, being cut off from social advantages. But that 


1 



1 One of these unknown correspondents wrote that their vicar had 




that Sunday begun — he would have said commenced — his sermon with 



y the words, “ God is Love, as the Archbishop of Canterbury remarked v 



: week in Westminster Abbey. 


[xii] 










P r efa c e 

fact did me no good. The dispassionate statement of it 
had no more effect on my young friends than mv father’s 
denial had on my elderly relations. 

I am ashamed to say that once again, as in the case of 
u Aunt Anne,” I endeavoured to exculpate myself in order 
to pacify two old maiden ladies. Why is it always the 
acutely unmarried who are made miserable by my books ? 
Is it because — odious thought, avaunt ! — married persons 
do not open them ? These two ladies did not, indeed, 
think that I had been “ paying out ” some particular clergy- 
man, as suggested in their favourite paper, The Guardian ,* 
but they were shocked by the profanity of the book. Soon 
afterwards, the Bishop of Stepney (now Bishop of London) 
preached on “ Red Pottage ” in St. Paul’s. I sent them a 
newspaper which reprinted the sermon verbatim , with a 
note saying that I trusted this expression of opinion on the 
part of their idolised preacher might mitigate their condem- 
nation of the book. 

But when have my attempts at making an effect ever 
come off? My firework never lights up properly like that 
of others ; it only splutters and goes out. I received in 
due course a dignified answer that they had both been 

1 The Guardian , April nth, 1900. “Truth to tell, when I ap- 
preciated, with much amusement, the light in which one was expected 
to regard Mr. Gresley, I came to the conclusion that the authoress was 
paying out some particular High Church parson, who had perhaps 
snubbed her or got the better of her, by ‘ putting him into a book. * 
The poor feeble creature is described with appetite, so to speak, and 
when this is the case (with a lady writer) one is pretty safe in being 
sure one has come across the personal. Mr. Gresleys certainly exist, 
but only a woman in a (perhaps wholly justified) tantrum would speak 
of them as a type of the clergy in general.” — Thos. J. Ball. 

[xiii ] 














Preface 

deeply distressed by my information, as it would prevent 
their ever going to hear the Bishop of Stepney again. 

My own experience, especially as to u Red Pottage ” 
and u Prisoners,” struck me as so direful, I seemed so 
peculiarly outside the protection of Providence, like the 
celebrated plot of ground on which u no rain nor no dew 
never fell,” that I consulted several other brother and sister 
novelists as to how they had fared in this delicate matter. 
It is not for me to reveal the interesting skeletons concealed 
in cupboards not my own, but I have almost invariably 
returned from these interviews cheered, chuckling and con- 
soled, by the comfortable realisation that others had writhed 
on a hotter gridiron than I. 

George Sand, when she was accused of lampooning a 
certain Abbe, said that to draw one character of that kind 
one must know a thousand. She has, I think, put her 
finger on the truth, which is not easy to find ; at least I 
never found it until I read those words of hers. 

It is necessary to know a very large number of persons 
of a certain kind before one can evolve a type. Each he 
or she contributes a twig, and the author weaves them into 
a nest. I have no doubt that I must have taken such a 
twig from nearly every clergyman I met who had a soup$on 
of Mr. Gresley in him. 

But if an author takes one tiny trait, one saying, one 
sentiment, direct from a person, there is always the danger 
that the contributor will recognise the theft, and if of a 
self-regarding temperament will instantly conclude that the 
whole character is drawn from himself. There is, for in- 
stance, no more universal trait of what has been unkindly 
called “ the old-maid temperament ” in either sex than the 
[xiv] 















Preface 

assertion that it is always busy. But when such a trait is 
noted in a book, how many sensitive readers assume that it 
is a cruel personality. If people could but perceive that 
what they think to be character in themselves is often only 
sex, or sexlessness ; if they could but believe in the univer- 
sality of what they hold to be their individuality ! And yet 
how easily they believe in it when it is pleasant to do so, 
when they write books about themselves, and thousands of 
grateful readers bombard the gifted authoress with letters 
to tell her that they also have “ felt just like that ” and 
have u been helped ” by her exquisite sentiments, which are 
the exact replicas of their own ! 

The worst of it is that with the academic or clerical prig, 
when the mind has long been permitted to run in a deep 
platitudinous groove from which it is at last powerless to 
escape, the resemblance to a prig in fiction is sometimes 
more than fanciful ; it is real. For there is no doubt that 
prigs have a horrid family likeness to each other, whether 
in books or in real life. I have sometimes felt as the 
puzzled mother of some long-lost Tichborne might feel. 
Each claimant to the estates in turn seems to acquire a look 
of the original because he is a claimant. Has not this one 
my lost Willy’s eyes ? But no ! that one has Willy’s 
hands. True, but the last-comer snuffles exactly as my 
lost Willy snuffled. How many men have begun suddenly 
and indubitably in my eyes to resemble one of the adored 
prigs of my novels merely because they insisted on the 
likeness themselves ! 

The most obnoxious accident which has yet befallen me, 
the most wanton blow below the belt which Fate has ever 
dealt me, is buried beneath the snows of twenty vears. But 

[XV] 



I 









Preface 

even now I cannot recall it without a shudder. And if a 
carping critic ventures to point out that blows below the 
belt are not often buried beneath snow, then all I can say 
is that when I have made my meaning clear I see no reason 
for a servile conformity to academic rules of composition. 

I was writing “ Diana Tempest.” One of the charac- 
ters, a very worldly religious young female prig, was much 
in my mind. I know many such. I may as well mention 
here that I do not bless the hour on which I first saw the 
light. I have not found life an ardent feast of tumultuous 
joy. But I do realize that it has been embellished by the 
acquaintance of a larger number of delightful prigs than 
falls to the lot of most. I have much to be thankful for. 
Having got hold of the character of this lady, I piloted her 
through courtship and marriage. I gleefully invented all 
her sayings on these momentous occasions, and described 
the wedding and the abhorrent bridegroom with great mi- 
nuteness ; in short, I gloated over it. 

The book was finished, sold, finally corrected, and in 
the press, when one of the young women who had uncon- 
sciously contributed a trait to the character became affi- 
anced. She immediately began throwing off with great 
dignity, as if by clock-work, all the best things which I had 
evolved out of my own brain and had put into the mouth 
of my female prig. At first I was delighted with my own 
cleverness, but gradually I became more and more uneasy, 
and when I attended the wedding my heart failed me alto- 
gether. In “ Diana Tempest” I had described the rich, 
elderly, stout, and gouty bridegroom whom the lady had 
captured. There he was before my panic-stricken eyes ! 
The wedding was exactly as I had already described it. 
[xvi] 















Pre fa c e 

took place in London, just as I had said. The remembrance 
that the book had passed beyond my own control, the irrevo- 
cability of certain ghastly sentences came over me in a flash, 
together with the certainty that, however earnestly I might 
deny, swear, take solemn oaths on family Bibles, nothing, 
nothing, not even a voice from heaven, much less that 
of a rural dean still on earth, could make my innocence 
credible. 

I may add that no voice from heaven sounded, and that 
I never made any attempt at self-exculpation, or invited my 
father to sacrifice himself a second time. 

As I heard u The voice that breathed o’er Eden ” and saw 
the bride of twenty-five advance up the aisle to meet the 
bridegroom of forty-five awaiting her deeply flushed, in a 
distorted white waistcoat, — I had mercilessly alluded to his 
white waistcoat as an error of judgment, — I gave myself 
up for lost ; — and I was lost. 

But all this time, while I have been giving a free rein to 
my autobiographic instincts, the question still remains un- 
answered, Why is human nature so prone to think it has 
been travestied that it becomes impervious to reason on the 
subject the moment the idea has entered the mind ? Once 
lodged, I have never known such an idea dislodged, how- 
ever fantastic. Why is it that if, like Mrs. Clifford, one 
has the good fortune to evolve a type, no one can believe it 
is not an individual ? Why does not the outraged friend 
console himself with the remembrance that if he is one of 
many others who are feeling equally harrowed he cannot 
really be the object of a malignant spite, carefully disguised 
till then under the apparel of a cheerful friendship ? 

I think an answer — a partial answer — to the latter 
[ xvii ] 












Preface 

question may be found in the fact that balm was never yet 
poured on a wounded spirit by the assurance that there are 
thousands of others exactly like itself. We can all endure 
to be lampooned. (I have even known a man who was 
deeply disappointed when he was forced to believe that he 
had not been victimised.) But to be told we are one of 
a herd ! This flesh and blood cannot tolerate. It is un- 
thinkable ; a living death. That we who w look before and 
after,” and u whose sincerest laughter with some pain is 
fraught ” ; that we , lonely, superb, pining for what is not, 
misunderstood by our nearest and dearest, who don’t know, 
and never can know “ Half the reasons why we smile or 
sigh ” (unless indeed we are autobiographists. Then they 
know all the reasons) — that we should be confused with 
the vast mob of foolish sentimental spinsters, or pedantic 
clerics, or egotistic old bachelors ! 

Away ! Away ! The reeling mind stops its ears against 
these obscene suggestions. 

The only alternative which remains is that an unscrupu- 
lous novelist has heard of us — nothing more likely — with- 
out being actually acquainted with us, and has listened to 
garbled accounts of us from our so-called friends : or has 
actually met us at a bazaar or a funeral, though of course 
he professes to have forgotten the meeting; has been im- 
pressed with our subtle personality — nothing more likely ; 
has felt an envious admiration of what we ourselves value 
but little — our social charm; and has yielded — nothing 
more likely — to the ignoble temptation of caricaturing 
qualities which he cannot emulate. Or perhaps he has 
known us for years, and has shown a mysterious indifference 
to our society, an impatience of our deeper utterances which 
[ xviii ] 















Preface 

we can now, at last , trace to its true source, a guilty con- 
sciousness of premeditated treachery which has led him to 
strike us in a dastardly manner which we can indeed afford 
— being what we are — to forgive, but which we shall never 
forget. And if an opportunity offers later on, it is possible 
that an unprejudiced and judicial mind may feel called upon 
to indicate what it thinks of such conduct. 

Perhaps only those whose temperament leads them to be- 
lieve themselves ridiculed in a book know the rankling 
smart, the exquisite pain, the sense of treachery of such an 
experience. It is probably the most offensive slight that 
can be offered to a sensitive nature. 

And if the author realizes this, even while he knows him- 
self to be guiltless in the matter, it is probable, if he also is 
somewhat sensitive — and some authors are — that a great 
deal of the delight he may derive from a successful novel 
may be dimmed by the realisation that he has unwittingly 
pained a stranger, or, worse still, an acquaintance, or, im- 
measurably worst of all — an old friend. 




[xix] 









■ 





























v 






































■ 






















































































< 

























- 











CONTENTS 

Page 

The Hand on the Latch 25 

The Lowest Rung 42 

The Understudy 75 

Saint Luke’s Summer 94 




















; • 







I 




% 





> - 






t* 




i 
















V 

/ 
















r 












THE HAND ON THE LATCH 

There came a man across the moor y 
Fell and foul of face was he. 

He left the path by the cross-roads three , 

And stood in the shadow of the door. 

Mary Coleridge. 

S HE stood at her low window with its uneven waver- 
ing glass, and looked out across the prairie. A 
little snow had fallen, - — not much, only enough to add 
a sense of desolation to the boundless plain, the infinite plain 
outside the four cramped walls of her log hut. The log 
hut was like a tiny boat moored in some vast, tideless, im- 
passable sea. The immensity of the prairie had crushed 
her in the earlier years of her married life, but gradually 
she had become accustomed to it, then reconciled to it, at 
last almost a part of it. The grey had come early to her 
thick hair, a certain fixity to the quiet courage of her eyes. 
Her calm, steadfast face showed that she was not given to 
depression, but nevertheless this evening, as she stood 
watching for her husband’s return, for the first distant speck 
of him where the cart rut vanished into the plain, a sense 
of impending misfortune enfolded her with the dusk. Was 
it because the first snow had fallen ? Ah me ! how much 
it meant. It was as significant for her as the grey pallor 
that falls on a sick man’s face. It meant the endless 
winter, the greater isolation instead of the lesser, the power- 
lessness to move hand or foot in that all-enveloping 
shroud ; the struggle, not for existence, — with him beside 
her that was assured, — not for luxury, — she had ceased to 

[ 25 ] 















The Hand on the Latch 

care for it, though he had not ceased to care for her sake, — 
but for life in any but its narrowest sense. Books, letters, 
human speech, through the long months these would be 
almost entirely denied her. The sudden remembrance 
of the larger needs of life flooded her soul, touching to 
momentary semblance of movement many things long 
cherished, but long since dead, like delicate sea plants be- 
yond high-water mark that cannot exist between the long 
droughts when the neap tide does not come. She had 
known what she was doing when against the wishes of her 
family she of the South had married him of the North, 
when she left the busy city life she knew, and clave to her 
husband, following him over the rim of the world, as 
women will follow while they have feet to follow with. 
She was his superior in birth, cultivation, refinement, but 
she had never regretted what she had done. The regrets 
were his for her, for the poverty to which he had brought 
her, and to which she had not been accustomed. She had 
only one regret, if such a thin strip of a word as regret can 
be used to describe her passionate controlled desolation, 
immense as the prairie, because she had no child. Perhaps 
if they had had children the walls of the log hut in the 
waste might have closed in on them less rigidly. It might 
have become more of a home. 

Her mind had taken its old mechanical bent, the trend 
of long habit as she looked out from that low window. 
How often she had stood there, and thought “ If only we 
might have had a child.” And now by sheer force of 
habit she thought it yet again. And then a slow rapture 
took possession of her whole being, mounted, mounted till 
she leaned against the window-sill faint with joy. She was 
[26] 













The Hand on the Latch 

to have a child after all. She had hardly dared believe it at 
first, but as time had gone on a vague hope, quickly sup- 
pressed as unbearable, had turned to suspense, suspense had 
alternated with the fierce despair that precedes certainty. 
Certainty had come at last, clear and calm and exquisite as 
dawn. She would have a child in the spring. What was the 
winter to her now ! Nothing but a step towards joy. The 
world was all broken up and made new. The prairie, its great 
loneliness, its deathlike solitude, were gone out of her life. 
She was to have a child in the spring. She had not dared to 
tell her husband till she was sure. But she would tell him 
this evening when they were sitting together over the fire. 

She stood motionless in the deepening dusk, trying to be 
calm. And at last in the far distance she saw a speck arise, 
as it were, out of a crease in the level earth — her husband 
on his horse. How many hundreds of times she had seen 
him appear over the rim of the world, just as he was ap- 
pearing now ! She lit the lamp and put it in the window. 
She blew the log fire to a blaze. The firelight danced on 
the wooden walls, crowded with cheap pictures, and on 
the few precious daguerreotypes that reminded her she too 
had brothers and sisters and kin of her own, far away in 
one of those southern cities where the war was still smould- 
ering grimly on. 

Her husband took his horse round and stalled him. 
Presently he came in. They stood a moment together in 
silence as their custom was, and she leaned her forehead 
against his shoulder. Then she busied herself with his 
supper, and he sat down heavily at the little table. 

u Had you any difficulty this time in getting the money 
together? ” she asked. 

[27] 
















The Hand on the Latch 

Her husband was a tax collector. 

“ None/’ he said abstractedly, “ at least — yes — a little. 
But I have it all, and the arrears as well. It makes a 
large sum.” 

He was evidently thinking of something else. She did 
not speak again. She saw something was troubling him. 

“ I heard news to-day at Phillip’s,” he said at last, “ which 
I don’t like. If I had heard in time, and if I could have 
borrowed a fresh horse, I would have ridden straight on to 

. But it was too late in the day to be safe, and you 

would have been anxious what had become of me if I had 
been out all night with all this money on me. I shall go 
to-morrow as soon as it is light.” 

They discussed the business which took him to the near- 
est town thirty miles away, where their small savings were 
invested, — somewhat precariously as it turned out. What 
was safe, who was safe while the invisible war between 
North and South smouldered on and on ? It had not come 
near them, but as an earthquake which is engulfing cities 
in one part of Europe will rattle a teacup without over- 
setting it on a cottage shelf half a continent away — so the 
Civil War had reached them at last. 

u I take a hopeful view,” he said, but his face was over- 
cast. “ I don’t see why we should lose the little we have. 
It has been hard enough to scrape it together, God knows. 
Promptitude and joint action with Reynolds will probably 
save it. But I must be prompt.” He still spoke abstract- 
edly, as if even now he were thinking of something else. 

He began to take out of the leathern satchel various bags 
of money. 

u Shall I help you to count it ? ” 

[28] 










The Hand on the Latch 

She often did so. 

They counted the flimsy dirty paper money together, and 
put it all back into the various labelled bags. 

“ It comes right,” he said. 

Suddenly she said, “ But you can’t pay it into the bank 
to-morrow if you go to ” 

“ I know,” he said, looking at her ; u that is what I have 
been thinking of ever since I heard Phillip’s news. I 
don’t like leaving you with all this money in the house, 
but I must.” 

She was silent. She was not frightened for herself, but 
it was state money, not their own. She was not nervous 
as he was, but she had always shared with him a certain 
dread of those bulging bags, and had always been thankful 
to see him return safe — he never went twice by the same 
track — after paying the money in. In those wild days 
when men went armed with their lives in their hands it 
was not well to be known to have large sums about you. 

He looked at the bags, frowning. 

u I am not afraid,” she said. 

a There is no real need to be,” he said after a moment. 
cc When I leave to-morrow morning it will be thought I 
have gone to pay it in. Still — ” 

He did not finish his sentence, but she knew what was 
in his mind : the great loneliness of the prairie. Out in 
the white night came the short, sharp yap of a wolf. 

cc I am not afraid,” she said again. 

U I shall only be gone one night,” he said. 

u I have often been a night alone.” 

cc I know,” he said, “ but somehow it ’s worse leaving 
you with so much money in the house.” 

[29] 











The Hand on the Latch 

u No one knows it will be there.” 

u That is true,” he said, “ except that everyone knows 
I have been collecting large sums.” 

u They will think you have gone to pay it in as usual.” 

cc Yes,” he said with an effort. 

Then he got up, and went to his tool box. She watched 
him open it, seeing him in a new light, which encompassed 
him with even greater love. u If I tell him to-night,” she 
thought, “ it will make him even more anxious about leav- 
ing me. Perhaps he would refuse to go, and he must go. 
I will not tell him till he comes back.” 

The resolution not to speak was like taking hold of a 
piece of iron in frost. She had not known it would hurt 
so much. A new tremulousness, sweet and strange, passed 
over her, — not cowardice, not fear, not of the heart nor of 
the mind, but a sort of emotion of the whole being. 

“ I will not tell him,” she said again. 

Her husband got out his tools, took up a plank from the 
floor, and put the money into a hole beneath it, beside their 
small valuables, such as they were, in a biscuit tin. Then 
he replaced the plank, screwed it down, and she drew back 
a small fur mat over the place. He put away the tools and 
then came and stood in front of her. He was not con- 
scious of his transfiguration, and she dropped her eyes for 
fear of showing it. 

“ I shall start early,” he said, cc as soon as it is light, and 
I shall be back before sundown the day after to-morrow. 
I know it is unreasonable, but I shall go easier in my mind 
if you will promise me one thing.” 

“ What is it ? ” 

“ Not to go out of the house, or to let any one else come 

[30] 















The Hand on the Latch 


he said. 


in on any pretence whatever, while I am away, 
u Bar everything, and stay inside.” 

u I sha’n’t want to go out.” 

He made an impatient movement. 

w Promise me that come what will you will let no one in 
during my absence,” he said. 

“ I promise.” 

u Swear it.” 

She hesitated. 

u Swear it to please me,” he said. 

“ I swear that I will let no one into the house, on any 
pretext whatever, until you come back,” she said, smiling at 
him. 

He sighed and relapsed into his chair, and gave way to 
the great fatigue that possessed him. 

The next morning he started soon after daybreak, but 
not until he had brought her in sufficient fuel to last several 
days. There had been more snow in the night, fine snow 
like salt, but not enough to make travelling difficult. She 
watched him ride away, and silenced the voice within her 
which always said as she saw him go, u You will never see 
him again, you have heard his voice for the last time.” Per- 
haps, after all, the difference between the brave and the 
cowardly lies in how they deal with that voice. Both hear 
it. She silenced it instantly. It spoke again more in- 
sistently : “ You have heard his voice, felt his kiss, for the 
last time. He will never see the face of his child.” She 
silenced it again, and went about her work. 

The day passed as countless other days had passed. She 
was accustomed to be much alone. She had work to do, 
enough and to spare, within the little home which was to 
[ 3 1 ] 











become a real home, please God, in the spring. The 
evening fell almost before she expected it. She locked and 
barred the doors, and closed the shutters of the windows. 
She made all secure, as she had done many a time before. 

And then putting aside her work, she took down the 
newest of her well-worn books lately sent her from New 
Orleans and began to read : 

Oui, sans doute, tout meurt ; ce monde est un grand reve, 

Et le peu de bonheur qui nous vient en chemin, 

Nous n’avon pas plus tot ce roseau dans la main, 

Que le vent nous Tenleve. 

Que le vent nous l’enleve. She repeated the last words 
to herself. Ah ! no. The wind could not take her hap- 
piness out of her hand. 

A wandering wind had arisen at nightfall, and it came 
softly across the snow and tried the doors and windows as 
with a furtive hand. She could hear it coming as from an 
immense distance, passing with a sigh, returning plaintive, 
homeless, forlorn, to whisper round the house : 

J’ai vu sous le soleil tomber bien d’autres choses 
Que les feuilles des bois, et Tecume deseaux, 

Bien d’autres s'en aller que le parfum des roses 
Et le chant des oiseaux. 

That wind meant more snow. Involuntarily she laid 
down her book and listened to it. 

How like the sound of the wind was to wandering foot- 
steps, slowly drawing near, creeping round the house. She 
could almost have fancied that a hand touched the shutters 
was even now trying to raise the latch of the door. 

[32] 













The Hand on the Latch 

A moment of intense silence, in which the wind seemed 
to hold its breath and listen without, while she listened 
within, and then a low, distinct knock upon the door. 

She did not move. 

u It is the wind,” she said to herself \ but she knew it was 
not. 

The knock came again, low, urgent, not to be denied. 

She had become very cold. She had supposed fear was 
an emotion of the mind. She had not reckoned for this 
slow paralysis of the body. 

She managed to creep to the window and unbar the shut- 
ter an inch or two. By pressing her face against the ex- 
treme corner of the pane she could just discern in the snow 
light part of a man’s figure, wrapped in a long cloak. 

She barred the window once more. She was not sur- 
prised. She knew now that she had known it always. 
She had pretended to herself that the thief would not come ; 
but she was expecting him when he knocked. And he 
stood there, outside. Presently he would be inside. 

He knocked yet again, this time more loudly. What 
need was there for silence when for miles and miles round 
there was no ear to hear save that of a chance prairie dog ? 

She laid hold upon her courage, seeing that it was her 
only refuge, and went to the door. 

w Who is there ? ” she said through a chink. 

A man’s voice, low and feeble, replied, “ Let me in.” 

u I cannot let you in.” 

There was a short silence. 

u I pray you let me in,” he said again. 

w I have told you I cannot. Who are you ? ” 
u I am a soldier, wounded. I’m trying to get back to 
3 [ 33 ] 









my friends at 


He mentioned a settlement about 


fifty miles north. a I have missed my way, and I can’t 
drag myself any further.” 

Her heart swung violently between suspicion and com- 
passion. 

“ I am alone in the house,” she said. “ My husband 
is away, and he made me promise not to let anyone in on 
any pretence whatever during his absence.” 

a Then I shall die on your doorstep,” said the voice. 
u I can’t drag myself any further.” 

There was another silence. 

w It is beginning to snow,” he said. 

“ I know,” she said ; and he heard the trouble in her 
voice. 

w Open the door and look at me,” he said, “ and see if I 
can do you any harm.” 

She opened the door and stood on the threshold, barring 
the way. He was leaning against the doorpost with his 
head against it, as she had often seen her husband lean 
when he was talking to her on a summer evening. Some- 
thing in his attitude, so like her husband’s, touched her 
strangely. Supposing he were in need, and pleaded for 
help in vain ! 

The man turned his face towards her. It was sunk and 
hollow, ravaged with pain, an evil-looking face. His right 
arm was in a sling under his tattered military cloak. He 
seemed to have made his final effort, and now stood staring 
dumbly at her. 

with a 
point of 














The Hand on the Latch 

exhaustion. Through the dim white night a few flakes of 
snow fell upon his harsh, repellent face and on his ban- 
daged arm. 

A sudden wave of pity carried all before it. 

She beckoned him into the house, and locked and barred 
the door. She put him in her husband’s chair by the fire. 
He hardly noticed anything. He seemed stupefied. He 
sat staring alternately at the fire and at her. When she 
asked him to which regiment he belonged he did not 
answer. 

She set before him the supper she had prepared for her- 
self, and chafed his hard, emaciated dirty hand till the 
warmth returned to it. Then he ate, with difficulty at 
first, then with slow voracity, all she had put before him. 

A semblance of life returned gradually to him. 

“ I was pretty near done up when I knocked,” he said 
several times. 

She dressed his wound, which did not appear very deep, 
wrapped it in fresh bandages, and readjusted his sling. He 
took it all as a matter of course. 

She made up a little bed of rugs and blankets for him in 
the back kitchen. When she came back to the living room 
she found he had dragged himself to his feet, and was look- 
ing vacantly at a little picture of President Lincoln on the 
mantel-shelf. She showed him the bed and told him to lie 
down on it. He obeyed her implicitly, like a child. She 
left him, and presently heard him cast himself down. A 
few minutes later she went to the door and listened. His 
heavy, regular breathing told her he was asleep. 

She went back to the kitchen and sat down by the fire. 
Was he really asleep ? Was it all feigned, — the wound, 
[ 35 ] 
















The Hand on the Latch 

the story, the exhaustion ? Had she been trapped ? Oh ! 
what had she done ? What had she done ? 

She seemed like two people. One self, silent, alert, 
experienced, fearless, knew that she had allowed herself to 
be deluded in spite of being warned, knew that her feelings 
had been played upon, made use of, not even dexterously 
made use of ; knew that she had disobeyed her husband, 
broken her solemn oath to him, plunged him with herself 
into disgrace if the money were stolen. And in the eyes 
of that self it was already stolen. It was still under the 
plank beneath her feet, but it was already stolen. 

The other self, tremulous, inconsequent, full of irresis- 
tible tenderness for suffering and weakness even in its 
uncouthest garb, said incessantly : 

u I could do no less. If I die for it, still I could do 
no less. Somebody brought him into the world. Some 
woman cried for joy and anguish when he was born. He 
would have died if I had not taken him in. I could do 
no less.” 

Through the long hours she sat by the fire, unable to 
reconcile herself to going upstairs to her own room and to 
bed. 

Once she got up and noiselessly took down her husband’s 
revolver from the mantel-shelf and examined it. He had 
taken its fellow with him, and apparently contrary to his 
custom he had taken the powder flask with him too, for it 
was gone from its nail. The revolvers were always kept 
loaded, but — by some evil chance the one that remained 
was unloaded. She could have sworn she had seen her 
husband load it two days ago. Why was this numbness 
creeping over her again ? She got out powder and bullets 

[36] 













The Hand on the Latch 

from a small store she had of her own, loaded and primed 
it, and laid it on the table beside her. 

The night had become very still. Her hearing seemed to 
reach out till she felt she could have heard a coyote move in 
its hole miles away. The log fire creaked and shifted. The 
tall clock in the corner ticked, catching its chain now and 
then, as its manner was. The wooden walls shrunk and 
groaned a little. The small home-like sounds only accen- 
tuated the enormous silence without. Suddenly in the 
midst of them a real sound fell upon her ear; very low 
but different, not like the fragmentary inadvertent murmur 
of the hut ; a small, purposeful, stealthy sound, aware of it- 
self. She listened as she had listened before, without moving. 
It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind the 
wainscot, hardly louder than the scraping of a mole’s thin 
hand in the soil. It continued. Then it stopped. It was 
only her foolish fancy, after all. There it was again. 
Where did it come from ? 

The man in the next room ? 

She took up the lamp and crept down the narrow passage 
to the door of the back kitchen. His loud, even breathing 
sounded distinctly through the crannies of the ill-fitting door. 
Surely it was overloud. She listened to it. She could hear 
nothing else. Was his breathing a pretence ? She opened 
the door noiselessly, and went in, shading the light with her 
hand. 

She bent over the sleeping man. At the first glance her 
heart sank, for he had not taken off his boots. But as she 
looked hard at him her suspicions died within her. He lay 
on his back, with his coarse, emaciated face towards her, his 
mouth open, showing his broken teeth. The sleep of utter 

[37] 











The Hand on the Latch 

exhaustion was upon him. She could have killed him as he 
lay. He was not acting. He was really asleep. 

She crept out of the room again, leaving the door ajar, 
and went back to the kitchen. 

Hardly had she sat down when she heard the sound 
again. It was too faint to reach her except when she was 
in the kitchen. She knew now where it came from — the 
door . Some one was picking the lock. 

The instant the sleeping man was out of her sight she 
suspected him again. 

Was he really asleep, after all? He had not taken off 
his boots. When she came back from making his bed she 
had found him standing by the mantel-shelf. Had he un- 
loaded the pistol in her absence? Would he presently get 
up, and open the door to his confederates ? 

Her mind rose clear and cold and unflinching. She took 
up the pistol, and then laid it down again. She wanted a 
more noiseless weapon. She got out her husband’s great 
clasp-knife from the open tool box, took the lamp, and 
crept back to the man’s bedside. She should be able to 
kill him. Certainly she should be able to kill him; and 
then she should have the pistol for the other one. 

But he still slept heavily. When she saw him again, 
again her suspicions fell from her. She knew he was 
asleep. 

She shook him by the shoulder, noiselessly, but with in- 
creasing violence, until he opened his eyes with a groan. 
Then only she remembered that she was shaking his 
wounded arm. He saw the knife in her hand, and raised 
his left arm as if to ward off* the blow. 

w Listen,” she whispered, close to his ear. w Don’t 

[38] 

















The Hand on the Latch 

speak. There is a man trying to break into the house. 
You must get up and help me.” 

He stared at her, vaguely at first, but with growing in- 
telligence. The food and sleep had restored him somewhat 
to himself. He sat up on the couch. 

“ Take off* my boots,” he whispered ; u I tried and could 
not.” 

Her last suspicion of him vanished. She cut the laces 
with her knife, and dragged his boots off. They stuck to 
his feet, and bits of the woollen socks came off with them. 
They had evidently not been taken off for weeks. While 
she did it he whispered, u Why should any one be wanting 
to break in ? There ’s nothing here to take.” 

a Yes, there is,” she said. “ There’s a lot of money.” 

“ Good Lord! Where?” 

“ Under the floor in the kitchen.” 

“ Then it ’s the kitchen they ’ll make for. You bet they 
know where the money is if they know it ’s here. Are 
there many of ’em ? ” 
u I don’t know.” 

“Well, we shall know soon enough,” said the man. 
He had become alert, keen. “ Have you any pistols ? ” 
u Yes, one.” 

“ Fetch it, but don’t make a sound, mind.” 

She stole away, and returned with the pistol. She would 
have put it into his hand, but he pushed it away. 

cc It ’s no use to me,” he said, u with my arm in a sling. 
I will see what I can do with my left hand and the knife. 
Can you shoot ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Can you hit anything ? ” 

[ 39 ] 
















The Hand on the Latch 

“ Yes.” 

“ To be depended on ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“Well, it’s darned lucky. How long will that door 
hold?” 

They were both in the little passage by now, pressed 
close together, listening to the furtive pick, pick of some 
one at the lock. 

u I don’t think it will hold more than a minute.” 

“ Now, look here,” he said, u I shall go and stand at the 
foot of the stair, and knife the second man, if there is a 
second. The first man I ’ll leave to you. There ’s a bit 
of light outside from the snow. He ’ll let in enough light 
to see him by as he opens the door. Don’t wait. Fire at him 
as he comes in, and don’t stop ; go on firing at him till he 
drops. You’ve got six bullets. Don’t you make any mis- 
take and shoot me. I ’ve had enough of that already. 
Now you look carefully where I ’m going to stand, and 
when I ’m there you put out the lamp.” 

He spoke to her as a man does to his comrade. 

That she could be frightened did not seem to enter 
his calculations. He moved with catlike stealth to the 
foot of the tiny staircase and flattened himself against the 
wall. Then he stretched his left arm once or twice as if to 
make sure of it, licked the haft of the knife, and nodded at her. 

She instantly put out the lamp. 

All was dark save for a faint thread of light which out- 
lined the door. Across the thread something moved once — 
twice. The sound of picking ceased. Then another sound 
succeeded it, a new one, unlike the last, as if something 
were being gently prised open, wrenched. 

[40] 














The Hand on the Latch 

u The bar will hold,” she said to herself, and then remem- 
bered for the first time that the rung into which the bar 
slid had been loose these many days. It was giving now. 

It had given ! 

The aoor opened silently, and a man came in. 

For a moment she saw him clear, with the accomplice 
snow-light behind him. She did not hesitate. She shot 
once and again. He fell and struggled violently up, and 
she shot again. He fell and dragged himself to his knees, 
and she shot again. Then he sank gently and slowly down 
as if tired, with his face against the wall, and moved no 
more. 

The man on the stairs rushed out and looked through 
the open door. 

“ By G — , he was single-handed ! ” he said. 

Then he stooped over the prostrate man and turned him 
over on his back. 

“Dead!” he said, chuckling. “Well done, Missus! — 
stone dead ! ” 

He was masked. 

The dirty left hand tore the mask callously off the gray 
face. 

The woman had drawn near and looked over his 
shoulder. 

u Do you know him ? ” said the man. 

For a moment she did not answer, and the pistol which 
had done its work so well dropped noisily out of her palsied 
hand. 

“ He is a stranger to me,” she said, looking fixedly at 
her husband’s fading face. 


[41] 














THE LOWEST RUNG 

JVe are dropping down the ladder rung by rung. 

Rudyard Kipling. 

T HE sudden splendour of the afternoon made me 
lay down my pen and tempted me afield. It 
had been a day of storm and great racing cloud 
wracks, after a night of hurricane and lashing rain. But 
in the afternoon the sun had broken through, and I struggled 
across the water meadows, the hurrying, turbid water nearly 
up to the single planks across the ditches, and climbed to 
the heathery uplands, battling my way inch by inch against 
a tearing wind. 

My art had driven me forth from my warm fireside, as 
it is her wont to drive her votaries, and the call of my art 
I have never disobeyed. 

For no artist must look at one side of life only. We 
must study it as a whole, gleaning rich and varied sheaves 
as we go. My forthcoming book of deep religious experi- 
ences, intertwined with descriptions of scenery, needed a 
little contrast. I had had abundance of summer mornings 
and dewy evenings, — almost too many dewy evenings ; 
and I thought a description of a storm would be in keeping 
with the chapter on which I was at that moment engaged, 
in which I dealt with the stress of my own illness of the 
previous spring, and the mystery of pain, which had neces- 
sitated a significant change in my life, — a visit to Cromer. 
The chapter dealing with Cromer, and the insurgent doubts 
of convalescence wandering on its poppy-strewn cliffs, as 

[42] 













The Lowest Rung 

to the beneficence of the Deity, was already done, and one 
of the finest I had ever written. 

But I was dissatisfied with the preceding chapter, and as 
usual went for inspiration to nature. 

It was late by the time I reached the upland, but I was 
rewarded for my climb. 

Far away under the flaring sunset the long lines of tidal 
river and sea stretched tawny and sinister like drawn swords 
in fire-light between the distant woods and cornfields. The 
deathlike stillness and smallness of the low-lying rigid land- 
scape made the contrast with the rushing enormity and tur- 
moil of the heavens almost terrific. 

Great clouds shouldered up out of the sea, blotting out 
the low sun, darkening the already darkened earth, and 
then towered up the sky, releasing the struggling sun only 
to extinguish it once more in a new flying cohort. 

I do not know how long I stood there, spellbound, the 
woman lost in the artist, scribbling frantically in my note- 
book, when an onslaught of rain brought me to my senses 
and I looked round for shelter. 

Then I became aware that I had not been watching 
alone. A desolate-looking figure, crouching at a little dis- 
tance, half hidden by a gorse bush, was watching too, 
watching intently. She got up as I turned and came 
towards me, her uncouth garments whipped against her by 
the wind. 

The rain plunged down upon us, enveloping us both as 
in a whirlwind. 

a There is an empty cottage under the down,” I shouted 
to her, and I began to run towards it. It was a tumble- 
down place, but any port in such a storm. 

[ 43 ] 
















The Hand on the Latch 

u It is not safe,” she shouted back ; “ the roof is fall- 
ing in ! ” 

The squall of rain whirled past as suddenly as it had 
come, leaving me gasping. 

She seemed to take no notice of it. 

“ I spent last night there,” she said. cc The ceiling came 
down in the next room. Besides,” she added, “ though 
possibly that may not deter you, there are two policemen 
there.” 

I saw now that it had been the cottage which she had 
been watching. 

And sure enough, in a broken shaft of sunshine which 
straggled out for a moment I saw two dark figures steal 
towards the cottage under cover of the wall. 

“ Why are they there ? ” I said, gaping at such a strange 
sight. For I had been many months at RufFord, and I had 
never seen a policeman. 

“ They are lying in wait for some one,” she said. 

It flashed back across my mind how at luncheon that 
day the vicar had said that a female convict had escaped 
from Ipswich gaol, and had been traced to Bealings, and 
it was conjectured was lurking in the neighbourhood of 
Woodbridge. 

I took sudden note of my companion’s peculiar dark 
blueish clothes and shawl, and the blood rushed to my head. 
I knew what those garments meant. She pushed back her 
grizzled-hair from her lined, walnut-coloured face, and we 
looked hard at each other. 

There was no fear in her eyes, but a certain curiosity as 
to what I was going to do. 

w If I told you they were not looking for me,” she said, 

[ 44 ] 














The Lowest Rung 

<c I could not under the circumstances expect you to believe 
it.” 

I am too highly strung for this work-a-day world. I 
know it to my cost. The artistic temperament has its 
penalties. My doctor at Cromer often told me that I vi- 
brated like a harp at the slightest touch. 

I vibrated now. Indeed I almost sat down in the sodden 
track. 

But unlike many of my brothers and sisters of the pen I 
am capable of impulsive, even quixotic action, and I ought 
in justice to myself to mention here that I had not then 
read that noble book “ The Treasure of Heaven,” in which 
it will be remembered that a generous-souled woman takes 
in from the storm, and nurses back to health in her lowly 
cottage, an aged tramp who turns out to be a millionaire, 
and leaves her his vast fortune. I did not get the idea of 
acting as I am about to relate from Marie Corelli, the head 
of our profession, or indeed from any other writer. But I 
have so often been accused of taking other people’s plots 
and ideas and sentiments that I owe it to myself to make 
this clear before I go on. 

“You poor soul,” I said, “ whatever you are, and what- 
ever you’ve done, I will shelter you and help you to escape.” 

I felt I really could not take her into the house, so I 
added : “ I have a little stable in the garden, quite private, 
with nice dry hay in it. Follow me.” 

I suppose she saw at a glance that she could trust me, 
for she nodded, and I sped down the hill, she following at a 
little distance, with a shrieking, denouncing wind behind us. 
I walked as quickly as I could, but when I got as far as the 
water meadows my strength and breath gave way. I was 
[ 45 ] 

















The Hand on the Latch 

never robust, and always foolishly prone to overtax my small 
store of strength. I was obliged to stop and lean my head 
on my arms against a stile. 

“ There is no need for such hurry,” she said tranquilly. 
She had come up noiselessly behind me. “ There is not a 
soul in sight. Besides, look what you are missing.” 

She pointed to the familiar fields before me which we 
had yet to cross, with the Dieben winding through them 
under its low red brick bridges, and beyond the little clus- 
tered village with its grey church spire standing shoulder 
high above the poplars. 

The sun had just set, and there was no colour in the west, 
but over all the homely wind-swept landscape a solemn and 
unearthly light shone and slowly passed, shone and slowly 
passed. 

“ Look up,” said my companion, turning a face of flame 
towards me. 

I looked up into the sky, as into an enormous furnace. 
Gigantic rolling clouds of flame were sweeping before the 
roaring wind like some vast prairie fire across the firmament. 
As they passed overhead the reflection of the lurid light on 
them was smitten earthwards, and passed with them, making 
everything it traversed clear as noon, the lion on the swing- 
ing sign of the public-house just across the water, the deli- 
cate tracery of the church windows, the Virginia creeper on 
my cottage porch. 

u I have only seen an afterglow like that once in my 
life,” my companion said, cc and that was in Teneriffe.” 

A few moments more and the sky paled to grey. The 
darkness came down with tropical suddenness. I made a 
movement forwards. 

[46] 















The Lowest Rung 

“ Shall I not be seen if I follow you through the village 
in these weird clothes ? ” she said civilly, as one who hesi- 
tates to make a suggestion. “ Where is your house ? ” 

cc My cot — it is not a house — is just at the end of those 
trees,” I said. u It is the only one close to the park gates. 
It has Virginia creeper over the porch, and a white gate.” 

“ It sounds charming.” 

u But how on earth are we to get there ? ” I groaned. 
“ And some one may come along this path at any moment.” 

The dusk was falling rapidly. Candles were beginning 
to twinkle in latticed windows. A yellow light from the 
public house made an impassable streak across the road. 
Cheerful voices were coming along the meadow path be- 
hind us. What was to be done ? 

“ Go home,” she said steadily. u I will find my own 
way.” 

u But my servant ? ” 

“ Make your mind easy. She will not see me. I shall 
not ring the bell. Have you a dog ? ” 

“No. My dear little Lindo — ” 

“ It ’s going to be a black night. I shall be in the porch 
half an hour after dark.” 

She went swiftly from me, and as the voices drew near 
I saw her pick her way noiselessly into one of the great 
ditches and stand motionless in the water, obliterated against 
a pollard willow. 

I hurried home. My feet were quite wet, and even my 
stockings, a thing that had not happened to me for years. 
I changed at once, and took five drops of camphor on a 
lump of sugar. It would be extraordinarily inconvenient if 
I were to take cold, with my tendency to bronchial catarrh. 

[ 47 ] 














The Hand on the Latch 

I have no time to be ill in my busy life. Was not “ Brood- 
ings beside the Dieben 99 being finished in hot haste for an 
eager publisher ? And had I not promised to give away 
the Sunday-school prizes at Forlinghorn a fortnight hence? 

It was half past six. My garden boy was pumping in 
the scullery. He kept his tools in the stable, and it was 
his duty to lock it up and hang the key on the nail inside 
the scullery door. 

Supposing he forgot to hang it up to-night of all nights ! 
Supposing he took it away with him by mistake ! I went 
into the scullery directly he had gone. I made a pretext of 
throwing away some flowers, though I had never thought 
of needing a pretext for going there before. The stable 
key was on its nail all right. I looked into the kitchen 
where my little maid-servant was preparing my evening 
meal. When her back was turned I snatched the key from 
the nail, dropped it noisily on the brick floor, caught it 
up, withdrew to the parlour, and sank down in my arm- 
chair, shaking from head to foot. My doctor was right 
indeed when he said I vibrated like a harp. 

The life of contemplation and meditation is more suited 
to my highly strung nature than that of adventure and 
intrigue. 

My servant brought in the lamp, and I hurriedly sat on 
the key while she did so. Then she drew the curtains in 
the little houseplace, locked the outer door, and went back 
to the kitchen. 

There are two doors to my cottage, — the front door with 
the porch leading to the lane, and the back door out of the 
scullery which opens into my little slip of garden. At the 
bottom of the garden is a disused stable, utilised by me to 

[48] 













The Lowest Rung 

store wood in, and old boxes. The gate to the back way 
to the stable from the lane had been permanently closed 
till the day should come when I could afford a pony and 
cart. But in these days novels of not too refined a type 
are the only form of literature, if they can be called litera- 
ture, for which the public is eager. It will devour and 
extol anything, however coarse, which panders to its love of 
excitement, while grave books, dealing with the spiritual 
side of life, books of thought and culture, are left unheeded 
on the shelf. Such had been the fate of mine. 

The rain had ceased at last, and the wind was falling. 
My mind kept on making all sorts of uneasy suggestions 
to me as I sat in my armchair. What was I to do with 
the — the individual when I got her safely into the stable, 
if I ever did get her safely there ? How about food, how 
about dry clothes, how about a light, how about everything ? 
Supposing she overslept herself and Tommy found her 
there in the morning when he went for his tools. Sup- 
posing my landlord Mr. Ledbury, who was a magistrate, 
found out I had harboured a criminal, and gave me notice 
just when I had repapered the parlour, and put in a new 
back to the kitchen range. Such a calamity was unthink- 
able. What happened to people who compounded felo- 
onies ? Was I compounding one ? Why was not I sitting 
down? What was I doing standing in the middle of the 
parlour with the stable key in my hand, and, as I caught 
sight of myself in the glass, with my mouth wide open ! 

I sat down again resolutely, hiding the key under the 
cushion, and calmer thoughts supervened. After all it was 
most improbable, almost impossible that I should be found 
out. And once the adventure was safely over, when I had 
4 [ 49 ] 















The Hand on the Latch 

successfully carried it through, what interesting accounts I 
should be able to give of it at luncheon parties in London 
in the winter ! My brothers would really believe at last 
that I could act with energy and presence of mind. There 
was a rooted impression in the minds of my own family 
that I was a flurried sort of person, easily thrown off my 
balance, making mountains out of molehills (this was espe- 
cially irritating to me, as I have always taken a broad, sane 
view of life), who always twisted my ankle if it could be 
twisted, or lost my luggage, or caught childish ailments for 
the second time. Where there is but one gifted member 
in a large and commonplace family an absurd idea of this 
kind is apt to grow from a joke into an idee fix'ee. 

It had obtained credence originally because I certainly 
had once in a dreamy moment got my gown shut into the 
door in an empty railway compartment on the far side. 
And as the glass was up on the station side I had been un- 
able to attract anyone’s attention when I wanted to alight, 
and had had to go on to Portsmouth where the train stopped 
for good before I could make my presence and my predica- 
ment known. This trivial incident had never been forgot- 
ten by my family. So much so that I had often regretted 
the hilarious spirit of pure comedy at my own expense which 
had prompted me to relate it to them. 

Now was the time to show what metal I was made of. 
My spirits rose as I felt I could rely on myself to be cau- 
tious, resourceful, bold. I sat on outwardly composed, but 
inwardly excited, straining my ears for a sign that the fugi- 
tive was in the porch. I supposed I should presently hear 
a light tap on my parlour window which was close to the 
outer door. 

[50] 













The Lowest Rung 

But none came. More than an hour passed. It had 
long been perfectly dark. What could have happened ? 
Had the poor creature been dogged and waylaid by those 
two policeman after all? Was it possible that they had 
seen us standing together at the stile, where she had so in- 
considerately joined me for a moment ? At last I became 
so nervous that I went to the outer door, opened it softly, 
and looked out. She was so near me that I very nearly 
screamed. 

“ How long have you been here ? ” I whispered. 

u Close on an hour.” 

“ Why did n’t you tap on the window or something, I 
was waiting to let you in.” 

“ I dared not do that. It might have been the kitchen 
window for all I knew, and then your servant would have 
seen me.” 

u But the kitchen is the other side.” 

u Indeed ! And where is the stable ? ” 

u At the bottom of the garden, away from the road.” 

“ How are we going to get at it ? ” 

w We can only get to it through the garden, now the 
back way is closed. I closed it because the village chil- 
dren — ” 

w Had not you better shut the door ? If any one passed 
down the road they would see it was open.” 

“ It ’s as dark as pitch.” 

u Yes, but there’s a little light from within. I can 
see you from outside quite plainly, standing in the door- 
way.” 

I led her indoors, and locked and bolted the door. 

u What is this room ? ” 

[51] 
















The Hand on the Latch 

u The houseplace. I have my meals here. I live very 
primitively. My idea is — ” 

“ Then your servant may come in at any moment to lay 
your supper.” 

I could not say that she seemed nervous or frightened, 
but the way she cut me short showed that she was so in 
reality. I was not offended, for I am the first to make al- 
lowance when rudeness is not intentional. I led the way 
hastily into the parlour. 

u She never comes in here,” I said reassuringly, u after 
she has once brought in the lamp. I am supposed to be 
working, and must not be disturbed.” 

cc I ’m not fit to come in,” she said. 

And in truth she was not. She was caked with mud 
and dirt from head to foot, an appalling figure in the lamp- 
light. The rain dripped from her hair, her sinister clothing, 
her whole person. She looked as if she must have hidden 
in a wet ditch. I gazed horror-struck at my speckless mat- 
ting and pale oriental rugs. I had never allowed a child 
or a dog in the house for fear of the matting, except of 
course my poor Lindo, who had died a few months previ- 
ously, and whom I had taught to wipe his feet on the mat. 

A ghost of a smile twitched her grey mouth. 

“ Is not that the Times ? ” she said. “ Spread it out 
four thick, and lay it on the floor.” 

I did so, and she stepped carefully on to it. 

u Now,” she said, standing on a great advertisement of a 
universal history, — cc now that I am not damaging the fur- 
niture, pull yourself together and think . How am I to get 
to the stable ? I can’t stop here.” 

She could not indeed. I felt I might be absolutely 
[ 52 ] 












The Lowest Rung 

powerless to get the muddy footprints out of the matting. 
And no doubt there were some in the houseplace too. 

u If I go through the scullery I may be seen,” she said, 
the water pattering off her on to the newspaper. u So 
lucky you take in the Times. It *s printed on such thick 
paper. Where does that window look out ? ” 

She pointed to the window at the further end of the 
room. 

u On to the garden.” 

“ Capital. Then we can get out through it, of course, 
without going through the scullery.” 

I had not thought of that. I opened the window, and 
she was through it in two cautious strides. 

u Now,” she said, looking back at me, w I ’m comparatively 
safe for the moment, and so is the matting. But before 
we do anything more get a duster — a person like you is 
sure to have a duster in a drawer — just so, there it is. Now 
wipe up the marks of my muddy feet in the room we first 
came into, as well as this, and then see to the paint of the 
window. I have probably smirched it. Then roll up the 
Times tight, and put it in the waste-paper basket.” 

She watched me obey her. 

“ Having obliterated all traces of crime,” she said when 
I had finished, u suppose we go on to the stable. Let me 
help you through the window. I will wipe my hands on 
the grass first. And would not you be wise to put on that 
little shawl I see on the sofa ? It is getting cold.” 

The window was only a yard from the ground, and I got 
out somehow, encumbered in my shawl, which a grateful 
reader had crocheted for me. She had, however, to help 
me in again directly I was out, for between us we had for- 

[53] 










gotten the stable key, which was underneath the cushion of 
my armchair. 

The rest was plain sailing. We stole down the garden 
path to the stable, and I unlocked the door and let her in. 

u Kindly lock me in and take away the key,” she said, 
vanishing past me into the darkness, and I thought I de- 
tected a tone of relief in her brisk matter-of-fact voice. 

w I will bring some food as soon as I can,” I whispered. 
“ If I knock three times you will know it ’s only me.” 

“ Don’t knock at all,” she said, u it might be noticed. 
Why should you knock to go into your own stable ! ” 

“ I won’t, then. And how about your wet things ? ” 
u That ’s nothing ; I ’m accustomed to being wet.” 

I crawled back to the cottage, and managed to scramble 
in by the parlour window, only to sink once more into my 
armchair in a state of collapse. I had always entered so 
acutely into the joys and sorrows of others, their love affairs, 
their difficulties, their bereavements, I had in this way led 
such a full life, that I was surprised at this juncture to find 
my nervous force so exhausted, until I remembered that 
ardent natures who give out a great deal in the way of help- 
fulness and interest are bound to suffer when the reaction 
comes. The reaction had come for me now. I saw only 
too plainly the folly I had been guilty of in harbouring a total 
stranger, the trouble I should probably get into, the diffi- 
culty that a nature naturally frank and open to a fault would 
find in keeping up a deception. I doubted my own pow- 
ers, everything. The truth was, but I did not realise it 
till afterwards, that I had missed my tea. 

I could hear my servant laying my evening meal in the 
houseplace. In a few minutes she tapped to tell me it 
[ 54 ] 













The Lowest Rung 

was ready, and I rose mechanically to obey the summons. 
And then to my horror I found I was still in morning dress. 
For the first time for years I had not dressed for dinner. 
What would she think if she saw me ! But it was too late 
to change now. I must just go in as I was. My whole 
life seemed dislocated, torn up by the roots. 

There was not much to eat. Half a very small cold 
chicken, a lettuce, and a little custard pudding, fortunately 
very nutritious, being made with Eustace M.iles proteid. 
There was, however, a loaf, and butter and plasmon biscuits 
on the sideboard. I cut up as much as I dared of the 
chicken, and put it between two very thick slices of buttered 
bread. Then I crept out again and took it to her. She 
got up out of the hay and put out a gnarled brown hand 
for it. 

4C I will bring you a cup of coffee later,” I said. I was 
beginning to feel a kind of proprietorship in her. She 
would have starved but for me. 

My servant always left at nine o’clock, to sleep at her 
father’s cottage just over the way. I have a bell in the 
roof, which I can ring with a cord in case of fire or 
thieves. 

To-night she was of course later than usual, but at last 
she brought in the coffee, and then I heard her making her 
rounds, closing the shutters on the ground floor, and lock- 
ing the front door, — at least trying to do so. I had already 
locked and bolted it. Then she locked the scullery door on 
the outside, abstracted the key, and I heard her step on the 
brick path, and the click of the gate. She was gone. 

I always heated the coffee myself over the parlour fire. 
It was already bubbling on the hob. Directly she had left 
[ 55 ] 









The Hand on the Latch 

I went to the kitchen and got a second cup. I felt much 
better since I had had supper \ and as I took the cup from 
the shelf the fantastic idea came into my mind to ask my 
protegee to come in and drink her coffee by the fire in the 
parlour. I must frankly own it was foolhardy, it was rash, 
it was even dangerous. But there it is ! One cannot help 
the way one is made, and I am afraid I am not of those 
who invariably take the coldly prudent course and stick 
to it. 

I turned the idea over in my mind. I could put down 
sheets of brown paper — I always have a store — from the 
door to the fire, and an old macintosh over the worst arm- 
chair which was to be recovered. Besides, I had not had 
a good look at her yet or made out the real woman under 
the prison garb. That she was a person of education and 
refinement may appear hardly credible to my readers, but 
to one like myself, whose metier it is to probe the secrets 
of my own heart and those of others ; to me it was suffi- 
ciently obvious, from the first moment, that though I had to 
deal with a criminal she was a very exceptional one, and 
belonging to my own class. I went out to the stable and 
suggested to her that she should come in. 

“ How do you know that I am not a man in disguise ? ” 
came a voice from the darkness, and it seemed to me, not 
for the first time, that she was amused at something. u I ’m 
tall enough. Just think how stupendous it would be if when 
I was inside and the door really locked I proved to be a 
wicked, devastating, burglarious male.” 

I wish you would not say things like that,” I said. u On 
your honour, are you a man ? ” 

She hesitated, and then said in a changed voice : 

[56] 












The Lowest Rung 

“ I am not. I don’t know what I am. I was a woman 
once, just as a derelict was a ship once. But whatever I 
am I am not fit to come into a self-respecting house. I am 
one solid cake of mud.” 

Something in her reluctance made me the more deter- 
mined. Besides, one of the truths on which I have insisted 
most strongly in my “ Veil of the Temple” is that if we 
show full trust and confidence in others they will prove 
worthy of that trust. Her coming indoors had now be- 
come a matter of principle, and I insisted. I even said I 
could lend her a dressing-gown and slippers, so that her wet 
clothes might be dried by the kitchen fire. 

She murmured something about a good Samaritan, but 
still demurred, and asked if I had a bathroom. I said I 
had. 

That decided her. She seemed to have no difficulty in 
making up her mind. She did not see two sides to things, 
as I always do myself. 

She said that if I liked to allow her to go to the bath- 
room first she would be happy to accept my kind invitation 
for an hour or so. If not, she would stay where she was. 

Half an hour later she was sitting opposite me in the 
parlour, on the other side of the wood fire, sipping her 
coffee. I had not put down the brown paper or the mac- 
intosh. It was not necessary. Her close-cropped curly 
grey hair, still damp from the bath, was parted, and brushed 
stiffly back over her ears. It must have been very beauti- 
ful hair once. Her thin hands, and thinner face and neck, 
looked more like brown parchment than ever as she sat in 
the lamplight, my old blue dressing-gown folded negligently 

[57] 













The Hand on the Latch 


round her and taking picturesque folds, which it never did 
when I was inside it. Those long gaunt limbs must have 
been graceful once. Her feet were bare in her slippers, — 
in my slippers, I mean. She looked rather like a well-bred 
Indian. 

It was obvious that she was a lady, but her speech had 
already told me that. What amazed me most where all 
amazed me was her self-possession. 

I wondered what her impression of me was, as we sat, 
such a strangely assorted couple, one on each side of the 
fire. Did I indeed seem to her the quixotic impetus, and 
yet withal dreamy creature, which my books show me to 
be ? But I have often been told by those who know me 
well that I am much more than my books. 

“ I have not sat by a fire for how many months ? ” she 
said, her black eyes on the logs. “ Let me see, last time 
was in a lonely cottage on the Cotswolds. It was a night 
like this, but colder, and a helpless old couple let me in, 
and allowed me to dry my clothes, and lie by their fire all 
night. Very unwise of them, was n’t it? I might have 
murdered them in their beds.” 

I began to feel rather uncomfortable. 

“You are not undergoing a sentence for murder, are 
you ?” I asked. 

She looked at me for a moment, and then said : 

“ The desperate creature who escaped from gaol three 
days ago, and who was in for life for the murder of the 
man she lived with, and whose convict clothes I am wear- 
ing, — whose clothes, I mean, are at this moment drying 
before your kitchen fire, — is not the same woman who 
is now drinking your excellent coffee.” 

[58] 







prison 








The Lowest Rung 

“Do you mean to tell me you have never been in 



“Yes, for a year; but I served my time and finished it 
four years ago.” 

I wrung my hands. I was deeply disappointed in her. Her 
transparent duplicity, which could impose on no one, not 
even so unsuspicious a nature as mine, hurt me to the quick. 

“ Oh ! you poor soul ! ” I said, “don’t lie to me. In- 
deed it is n’t necessary. I will do all I can for you. I will 
help you to get away. I will give you other clothes, and 
money, and we will bury these — these garments of shame. 
But don’t, for God’s sake, don’t lie to me.” 

She looked gravely at me, as if she were measuring me, 
and seeing, no doubt, that I was not deceived, a dusky red 
rose for a moment to her face and brow. 

“ It is not easy to speak the truth to some people,” she 
said, her eyes dropping once more to the fire, “ even when 
they are as compassionate and kind as you are.” 

“ Truthfulness is a habit that may be regained,” I said 
earnestly. “ I myself, without half your temptations, was 
untruthful once.” 

To associate oneself with the sins of others, to show one’s 
own scar, is not this sometimes the only way to comfort 
those overborne in the battle of life ? Had I not chronicled 
my own failing in the matter of truthfulness when I fool- 
ishly and wickedly took blame on myself for the fault of one 
dear to me, in my first book, “ With Broken Wing ” ? But 
I saw as I spoke that she had not read it and did not realise 
to what I was alluding. I have so steadily refused to be in- 
terviewed that possibly also she had not even yet guessed 
who I was. 

[59] 













S\i 


The Hand on the Latch 

cc I am sure, I am quite sure,” I went on after a moment, 
“ that there is a great deal of good in you, that you are by 
nature truthful.” 

u Am I, I wonder ? Perhaps I was so once, in the 
early untroubled days. But I have told many lies since 
then. 

She drank her coffee slowly, looking steadfastly into the 
fire, as if she saw in the wavering flame some reflection of 
another fire, on another hearthstone. 

u How good it is,” she said at last, putting her cup down. 
u How dreadfully good it is, the coffee and the fire, and 
the quiet room, and to be dry and warm and clean ! How 
good it all is ! And how little I thought of them when I 
had all these things ! ” 

She got up and looked at a water-colour over the low 
mantelpiece. 

“ Madeira, is n’t it ? ” she said. u I seem to remember 
that peculiar effect of the vivid purple of the bougainvillaea 
against the dim clouded purple of the hills behind.” 

u It is Madeira,” I said. u I was there ten years ago. 
Perhaps you have read my little book, — u Beside the 
Bougainvillaea.” 

“ My husband died there,” she said, looking fixedly at the 
drawing. u He died just before sunrise, and when it was 
over I remember looking out across the sea past the great 
English man-of-war in the harbour to those three little 
islands — I forget their names; and as the first level rays 
touched them, the islands and the ship all seemed to melt 
into half transparent amethyst in a sea of glass, beneath a 
sky of glass. How calm the sea was, — hardly a ripple ! I 
felt that even he, weak as he was, could walk upon it. It was 
[ 6 ° ] 














The Lowest Rung 

like daybreak in heaven, not on earth. And his long mar- 
tyrdom was over. It seemed as if we were both safe home 
at last.” 

u Had he been ill long ? ” 

u A long time. He suffered terribly. And I gave him 
morphia under the doctor’s directions. And then when he 
was gone, not at first, but after a little bit, I took morphia 
myself to numb my own anguish and to get a little 
sleep. I thought I should go mad if I could not get any 
sleep. I had better have gone mad. But I took morphia 
instead and sealed my own doom. But how can you tell 
whether I am speaking the truth ? Well, it doesn’t matter 
if you don’t believe me. I am accustomed to it. I am 
never believed now. And I don’t care if I ’m not. I 
don’t deserve to be. But I suppose you can see that I was 
not always a tramp on the highway. And at any rate that 
is what I am now, and what I shall remain, unless I drift 
into prison again, which God forbid, for I should suffo- 
cate in a cell after the life in the open air which I am 
accustomed to.” 

She shivered a little, as if she who seemed devoid of fear 
quailed at the remembrance of her cell. 

u You are wondering how I have fallen so low,” she said. 
“ Do you remember Kipling’s lines — 1 We are dropping 
down the ladder rung by rung.’ Well, I have known 
what it is to drop down the ladder of life clinging convul- 
sively to each rung in turn, losing hold of it, and being 
caught back by compassionate hands, only to let go of it 
again ; fighting desperately to hold on to the next rung 
when I was thrust from the one above it ; having my hands 
beaten from each rung, one after another, one after another, 
[ 6 1 ] 















The Hand on the Latch 

sinking lower and lower yet, cling as I would, pray as I 
would, repent as I would.” 

u Who beat your hands from the rungs ? ” I said 
“ Morphia,” she replied. 

There was a long silence. 

“ Morphia, — that was the beginning and the middle and 
the end of my misfortunes,” she said. u What did I do that 
gradually lost me my friends, — and I had such good friends, 
even after my best friend, my sister, died. What did I do 
that ruined me by inches ? In Australia I have heard of evil 
men taken red handed, being left in the bush with food and 
water by them, bound to a fallen tree which has been set on 
fire at one end. And the fire smoulders and smoulders, and 
travels inch by inch, along the trunk, and they watch their 
slow, inevitable death coming towards them day by day 
until it at last destroys them also inch by inch. What 
had I done that I should find myself bound like those 
poor wretches ? I cannot tell you. Morphia wipes out 
the memory as surely as drink. I only know that I was 
in torment. Faces, familiar and strange faces, some com- 
passionate, some indignant, some horror-struck, come back 
to me sometimes, blurred, as by smoke, but I see nothing 
clearly. 1 dimly remember fragments of appeals that were 
made to me, fragments of divine music in Cathedrals where 
I sobbed my heart out, — broken, splintered, devastating 
memories of promises made in bitter tears, and endless lies 
and subterfuges to conceal what I could not conceal. For 
morphia looks out of the eyes of its victim. I knew that, 
but I thought no one could see it in mine, that I could hide 
it. And I have one vivid recollection of a quiet room with 
flowers in it, and latticed windows, but I don’t know where 
[62] 














The Lowest Rung 

it was or how I came there, or who were the people in it 
who spoke to me. There was a tall woman with grey 
parted hair in a lilac gown. I can see her now. And I 
swore before God that I had left off the drug. And some- 
one standing behind me took the little infernal machine out 
of my pocket, and I was confronted with it. And the tall 
woman wrung her hands and groaned. How I hated her. 
And in my madness I accused her of putting it there to ruin 
me. And some one — a man — said slowly, “She is impos- 
sible. Quite impossible.” That one memory stands out 
like a little oasis in a desert of mirage and shifting sand and 
thirst. I should know the room again if I saw it. There 
was a window opening into a little paved courtyard with a 
fountain in it, and doves drinking. But I shall never see it 
again. And the drug became alive like a fiend, and pushed 
me lower and lower, down, always down, until I did 
something dreadful, I don’t know now exactly what it 
was, though the prison chaplain explained it to me. But 
it was about a cheque, and I was convicted and sent to 
prison.” 

“ Then you have been in prison twice ? ” I said, anxious 
to make it easy for her to be entirely truthful, for I could 
not doubt the truth of much of this earlier history. 

She did not seem to hear me. 

u There is no crime,” she went on, “however black, that 
I did not expiate then. If suffering can wash out sins I 
washed out mine. I, who thought I had so many enemies, 
have no enemy. No one has ever injured me. But if I 
had the crudest in the world I would not condemn him, if 
he were a morphia maniac, to sudden enforced abstinence 
and prison life. And I could not die; I am very strong by 

[63] 












nature. I could neither die nor live. It was months 
before I saw light, — months of hell, consumed in the flame 
of hell, which is thirst. And slowly the power to live came 
back to me. I was saved it spite of myself. And slowly 
the power of thought returned to me. I had time to think. 
My mind drifted and drifted, but I got control of it now 
and again, and then for longer intervals, as my poor body 
reasserted itself from the slavery of the drug. And I 
thought, I thought, I thought. And at last I made up my 
mind, my fierce, embittered mind. And when I came out of 
prison I took to the road. Even then there were those 
who would have helped me, but I steeled my heart against 
them. There was a strange woman with a sweet face 
waiting at the prison door, who spoke kindly to me. But 
I distrusted her. I distrusted every one. And I did not 
mean to be helped any more. I had been helped time and 
time again. To be helped was to be put where I could get 
morphia, where I had something, if it was only my clothes, 
which I could sell to get it ; where I could steal things to 
sell to get it. If I had any possessions I knew that some 
day, not for a time perhaps, but some day, I should sell them 
and get morphia somehow. They say you can’t buy it, 
but you can. I always could in the past, and I knew I 
always should in the future. But on the road — in rags — 
a tramp — down in the dust — in the safe refuge of the 
dust — there it was not possible. There I was out of temp- 
tation. There I could not be burned in that flame again. 
That was all I thought of, to creep away where the fire 
could not reach me. And I felt sure I should not live 
long. In my ignorance I thought the exposure to all 
weathers, and privation, and the first frost of winter would 

[64] 









^4 


Lowest Rung 

bring my release quickly. But they did not. They gave 
me new life instead. I came out in spring, and 1 begged 
my way to Abinger forest, and nearly starved there ; but I 
did not mind. Have you ever been in Abinger forest in 
the spring, when the whortleberry is out ? Can the Elysian 
field of asphodel be more beautiful? Perhaps to others 
they might seem so, but not to me. My first glimpse of 
hope came to me in the woods at Abinger in a windless, 
sunny week at Easter. The gypsies gave me food once 
or twice. And I ate the scraps that the trippers left after 
their picnics at the top of Leith Hill where the tower is. 
And I lay in the sun by day, and I slept in a stack of 
bracken by night, and my strained lips relaxed. And I, who 
had become so hard and bitter, saw at last what endless love 
and compassion had been vainly lavished on me, and I was 
humbled. I had somehow got it rooted into my warped 
mind that I had been cruelly treated, betrayed, abandoned 
by my friends, by everyone. I had tried hard to forgive 
them, but I could not. I saw at last that it was I who had 
been cruel, I who had betrayed, I who needed forgiveness. 
And I asked it of the only friend I had left, the only friend 
who never forsakes us. And peace came back, and the 
deep wound in my life healed. It seemed as if Nature, 
who had forgotten me for so long, had pity on me, and took 
me again to her heart. For I had loved her years ago, 
before my husband died. When the weather broke I took 
to the road, and the road has given me back my health, 
and much more than health. I can see beauty again now ; 
and there is always beauty in the hedgerow, and wherever 
the road runs there is beauty. In the open down, beside the 
tidal rivers with their brown sails creeping among the butter- 
5 [ 65 ] 














The Hand on the Latch 

cups, everywhere there is beauty. And I can sleep again 
now. I learnt how to sleep at Abinger. I had forgotten 
how it was done without morphia. O God, I can sleep; 
every night, anywhere. It ’s worth being a tramp for that 
alone, to be able to sleep naturally ; to know in the daytime 
that you will have it at night, and then to lie down, and 
feel it stealing over you like the blessing of God. I used 
to wake myself at first for sheer joy when it was coming. 
And then to nestle down, and sink into it, down, down 
into it till one reaches the great peace. And no more 
wakings in torment as the drug passes off, waking as in 
some iron grave unable to stir, hand or foot, unable to beat 
back the suffocating horror and terror which lies cheek to 
cheek with us. No more wakings in hell. No more morn- 
ings like that. But instead the cool, sweet waking in the 
crystal light in the open air. And to see the sun come up, 
and to lie still against the clean, fragrant haystack and let it 
warm you. And to watch the quiet friendly beasts rise up in 
the long meadows. And to wake hungry instead of that 
dreadful maddening thirst. And to like to eat, how good that 
is, even if you go fasting half the day ! But I never do. The 
poor will always give you enough to eat. It hurts them to 
see any one hungry. Yes, I have dropped down the ladder 
rung by rung. And now I have reached the lowest rung. 
And it is a good place, the only safe place for wastrels such 
as I, the only refuge from my enemy. There is peace on 
the lowest rung. I can do no more harm there, and I have 
done so much. I was ambitious once, I was admired and 
clever once, but I found no abiding city anywhere. Tempta- 
tion lurked everywhere. I was driven like chaff before the 
wind. . . . But now I have the road. No one will take 
[ 66 ] 














The Lowest Rung 

the road from me while I live, or the ditch beside it to die 
in when my time comes. I am provided for at last. I 
lead a clean life at last.” 

She sat silent, her dreamy eyes fixed, her thin hands 
folded one over the other. I looked at her with an aching 
heart. What strange mixture of truth and lies was all 
this ! But I said nothing. What was the use. 

And as we sat silent beside the dying fire the great ine- 
quality between us pressed hard upon me. I, by no special 
virtue of my own, God knows, on one of the uppermost 
rungs of life ; she — poor soul, poor soul ! — on the 
lowest. 

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed eleven. 

She started slightly, looked at it, and then at me, as if 
uncertain of her surroundings, and the shrewd, sardonic 
look came back to her face. 

“ I am keeping you up,” she said, rising. “ I think 
your strong coffee has gone to my head. This outburst of 
autobiography is a poor return for all your kindness. I had 
no idea it was so late or that I could be so garrulous, and 
I must make a very early start to-morrow. Shall I go into 
the kitchen and put on my own clothes again ? They 
must be quite dry by now.” 

“ Oh, let me help you ! ” I said impulsively. “ Let me 
get you into a home, or help you to emigrate. Don’t go 
back to this wandering, aimless life. Work for others, 
interest in others, that is what you need, what / need, what 
we all need to take us out of ourselves, to make us forget 
our own misery.” 

“I have half forgotten mine already,” she said. “ To- 
night I remembered it again. But I have long since put it 

[67] 















The Hand on the Latch 

from my mind. I think the moment for a change 
clothing in the kitchen has arrived.” 

She spoke quietly, but as if her last word were final. I 
found it impossible to continue the subject. 

u You will never escape in those clothes,” I said. cc You 
have n’t the ghost of a chance. If you will come into my 
room I will see what I can find for you.” 

I had been willing to do much more than give her 
clothes, but I instinctively felt that my appeal to her better 
feelings had fallen on deaf ears. 

She followed me to my bedroom, and I got out all my 
oldest clothes and spread them before her. But she would 
have none of them. 

u The worst look like an ultra-respectable district visi- 
tor,” she said, tossing aside one garment after another. It 
was the more curious that she should say that, because my 
brother-in-law had always said I looked like one, and that 
my books even had a parochial flavour about them. But 
then, he had never really studied them, or he would have 
seen their lighter side. 

u I had no idea pockets were worn in a little slit in the 
front seam,” said my visitor. “ It shows how long it is 
since I have been c in the know.’ No doubt front pockets 
came in with the bicycles. No. It is very kind of you; 
but except for that old dyed moreen petticoat the things 
won’t do. I always was particular about dress, and I never 
was more so than I am at this moment. You don’t happen 
to have an old black ulster with all the buttons off, and a 
bit of mangy fur dropping off* the neck ? That ’s more my 
style. But of course you have n’t.” 

u I had one once of that kind ; it was so bad that I could 

[ 68 ] 















The Lowest Rung 

not even give it away. So I put it in the dog’s basket. 
Lindo used to sleep on it. He loved it, poor dear. It may 
be there still.” 

We went downstairs again, and I pulled Lindo’s basket 
out from under the stairs. 

The old black wrap was still in it, but it was mildewy 
and stuck to the basket. It tore as I released it. It re- 
minded me painfully of my lost darling. 

u The very thing,” she said with enthusiasm, as the 
dilapidated travesty of a coat shook itself free, — “quiet 
and unobtrusive to the last degree. Parisian in colour and 
simplicity. And mole colour is so becoming. Can you 
really spare it ? Then with the moreen petticoat I am 
provided, equipped.’* 

We went back to the kitchen again. 

“ What will you do with them ? ” I said, pointing to 
her convict clothes, which had dried perfectly stiff, owing 
to the amount of mud on them. How such quantities of 
mud could have got on to them was a mystery to me. 

“ It certainly does not improve one’s clothes to hide in a 
wet ditch in a ploughed field,” she said meditatively. “ I 
will dispose of them early to-morrow morning. I picked a 
place as I found my way here.” 

u Not on my premises ? ” I said anxiously. 

“ Of course not. Do you take me for a monster of 
ingratitude ? I ’ll manage that all right.” 

I suddenly remembered that she must have food to take 
with her. I went to the larder, and when I came back I 
looked at her with renewed amazement. 

My dressing-gown and slippers were laid carefully on a 
chair. The astonishing woman was a tramp once more, 

[69] 















The Ha n d 

squatting on the brick floor, drawing on to her bare feet 
the shapeless excuses for boots which had been toasting 
before the fire. 

Then she leaned over the hearth, rubbed her hands in 
the ashes, and passed them gently over her face, her neck, 
her wrists and ankles. She drew forward and tangled 
her hair before the kitchen glass. Then she rolled 
up her convict clothes into a compact bundle, wiped 
her right hand carefully on the kitchen towel, and held it 
out to me. 

u Remember, ” I said gravely, taking it in both of mine 
and pressing it, w if ever you are in need of a friend you 
know whom to apply to. Marion Dalrymple, RufFord, 
will always find me.” 

I thought I ought not to let her go away without letting 
her know who I was. 

But my name seemed to have no especial meaning for 
her. Perhaps she had lived beyond the pale too long. 

cc You have indeed been a friend to me,” she said. w God 
bless you, you good Samaritan. May the world go well 
with you. Good night, and thank you, and good-bye. If 
you ’ll give me the stable key, I ’ll let myself in. It ’s a 
pity you should come out; it’s raining again. And I’ll 
leave the stable locked when I go. And the key will be 
in the lavender bush at the door. Good-bye again.” 

I did not sleep that night, and in the morning I was so 
tired that I made no attempt to work. I had of course 
stolen out before six to retrieve the stable key from the lav- 
ender bush, and hang it on its accustomed nail. I looked 
into the stable first. My guest had departed. 

[70] 

















The Lowest Rung 

I spent an idle morning musing on the events of the pre- 
vious evening, if time thus spent can be called idling. It 
may seem so to others, but in my own experience these ap- 
parently profitless hours are often more fruitful than those 
spent in belabouring the brain to a forced activity. But 
then I have always preferred to remain as the great Molinos 
advises — a learner rather than a teacher in the school of 
life. Early in the afternoon, as I was on my way to the 
post-office, my landlord, Mr. Ledbury, met me. He looked 
excited, an open telegram in his hand. 

“ Have you heard about the escaped convict ? ” he said. 
“She has been taken. She was traced to Bronsal heath 
yesterday, and run to earth this morning at Framlingham.” 

He turned and walked with me. 

He was too much taken up with the news to notice how 
I started and how my colour changed. But indeed I flush 
and turn pale at nothing. All my life it has been a vexa- 
tion to me that a chance word or allusion should bring the 
colour to my cheek. 

M Poor soul,” he said. “ I could almost wish she had 
made good her escape. She got out, Heaven alone knows 
how, to see her child, which she had heard was ill. But the 
ground she must have covered in the time ! She was abso- 
lutely dead beat when she was taken. And she was not in 
her prison clothes. That is so inexplicable. How she got 
others she alone knows. Some one must have befriended 
her, and given them to her, some one very poor, for she 
was miserably clad, and the extraordinary thing is that 
though she was traced to the deserted cottage on the heath 
yesterday, and taken at Framlingham to-day, her prison 
clothes were found hidden in my wood-yard, here in my 

[71] 
















The Hand on the Latch 

wood-yard, by Zack when he went to his work. And this 
place is not on the way to Framlingham. How in the name 
of fortune could she have hidden her clothes here ? ” 

u She must have wandered here in the dark,” I suggested. 
“ I don’t understand it,” he said, turning in at his own 
gate. “ But anyhow, the poor thing has been caught.” 

My story should end here. Indeed to my mind it does 
end here. And if I have been persuaded by my family to 
add a few more lines on the subject, it is sorely against the 
grain and against my artistic sense. And I am conscious 
that I have been unwise in allowing myself to be over- 
ruled by those who have not given their lives to literature 
as I have done, and who therefore cannot judge as I can 
when a story should be brought to a close. 

I need hardly say that I often thought of my unhappy 
visitant, often wondered how she was getting on. A year 
later I was staying with a friend in Ipswich who was a vis- 
itor at the prison there, and I remembered how it was to 
Ipswich she had been brought back, and I asked to see her. 
My friend knew her, and told me that she had made no 
further attempt to escape, and that she believed the child 
was dead. It had been an old promise that she would one 
day take me over the prison. I claimed it, and begged 
that I might be allowed to have a few words with that par- 
ticular inmate. It was not according to the regulations, 
but my friend was a privileged person. That afternoon I 
passed with her under that dreary portal, and after walking 
along interminable whitewashed passages, and past how 
many locked and numbered doors, my friend whispered to a 
warder, who motioned me to a cell. 

[ 7 2 ] 











The Lowest Rung 



A woman was sitting on her bed with her head in her 


hands. 


You have not forgotten me, I hope,” I said gently. It 


may be weak, but I have never been able to speak ungently 
to any one in trouble, whatever the cause may be. I have 
known too much trouble myself. 

She raised her head slowly, pushed back her hair, and 

looked at me. 

I had never seen her before. 

I could only stare helplessly at her. 

“ But you are not the woman who escaped last October ? ” 
I stammered at last. 

“ Yes,” she said apathetically, “ I am. Who else should 
I be ? What do you want with me ? ” 

But I was speechless. It was all so unexpected, so inex- 
plicable. I have often thought since how much stranger 
fact is than fiction. The more interested one is in life and 
in one’s fellow-creatures the more surprises there are in 
store for one. With every year I live my sense of wonder 
increases, and with it my realisation of my own ignorance. 
As I stared amazedly at her, a change came over her face. 
She looked at me almost with eagerness. 

u You didn’t take me for ’er, did you?” she said hur- 







Hand 




La tch 


give me a bit of a chance. Mine was fair stiff with mud, 
for I ’d laid in a wet ditch till night, but they showed the 
blasted colour for all that. And she give me all she had on 
her, her clothes, and a bite of bread and bacon, and two- 
pence. And it was n’t as if we was pals. I ’d never seen 
her afore. She stuck at nothing, and she only larfed at the 
risk, for they ’d have shut her up for certain if they ’d caught 
her. She said she ’d manage some’ow. And she ’eartened 
me up, and put me on the road for Wickham, and she said 
she ’d dror away the pursoot by hiding the prison clothes 
somewhere in the opsit direction where they could be found 
easy by the first fool.” 

“ She did it,” I said. 

“ And how did she spare ’em ? She ’d nuthin’ but them.” 

w I gave her some more. If she had been my own sis- 
ter I could not have done more for her.” 

“ And she worn’t caught, wor she ? ” 

“ Not that I know of. No, I feel sure she never was. I 
helped her to get away.” 

“ I was took in spite of all,” said the woman, a and by 
my own silliness. But I seed my little Nan alive fust, and 
that was all I wanted. And I don’t know who she was 
nor what she was. She tole me she was a outcast and a 
tramp and a good-for-nothing. But there ’s never been 
anybody yet, be they who they may, as done for me what 
she done. She ’d have give me the skin orf her back if she 
could ’ave took it orf. And it worn’t as if I knowed her. 
I ’d never set eyes on ’er afore, nor never shall again. 

I have never seen her again, either. 


[74] 


















THE UNDERSTUDY 

The only form of human love that atrophies the heart is the love of self. 

M ARION WRIGHT sat in the centre seat of 
the third row of the stalls, shivering in spite of 
her sables. It was the dress rehearsal of her first 
play, that play on which she had spent herself to the verge 
of mental bankruptcy. 

The nauseating presentiment of failure, the distaste and 
scorn of her own work, were upon her, which the artist 
never escapes, which return as acutely after twenty suc- 
cesses as in the hours of suspense before the first essay. 
Marion’s surroundings were not of a nature to reassure her. 
To her unaccustomed eyes the empty, dimly lit theatre, 
swathed and bandaged in dust-sheets, looked ominously 
dreary. Had any one ever laughed in this shrouded 
desert ? The long lines of stalls huddled under their 
wrinkled coverings stretched before and behind her. The 
boxes were shapeless holes of pallid grime. It was as if 
a London fog had trailed its dingy veil over everything. 
There was a fog outside as well, and the few electric lights 
which had been turned up peered blurred and yellow. An 
immense ladder, three ladders tied together, reared itself 
from the stalls to the roof. Something was being done to 
the lights on the ceiling. Tired-looking men in overcoats 
were creeping into the orchestra, thrusting white faces 
under screened lights and rustling papers on stands. 

Marion had the theatre to herself except for a few whis- 
perers in the back row of the stalls — her maid, an attend- 
[ 75 ] 















The Hand on the Latch 

ant, one or two actors of minor parts who did not appear 
in the first act, and a few costumiers. 

It was fiercely cold, and she had not slept for several 
nights. She wished she had never been born. 

A magnificent-looking woman, wearing her chin tilted 
slightly upwards, was squeezing herself and an immense 
fur coat towards her along the stalls, and sat down beside 
her. This was Lenore, the leading lady. 

She turned a colourless, beautifully shaped face and 
heavy eyes with bistred lashes towards Marion. 

“ I suppose we shall have to wait about two hours for 
Mr. Montgomery,” she said apathetically. 

“ Does he always keep people waiting ? ” 

“ Always, since he made his great hit in The Deodars .” 

There was a moment’s silence. 

“ Mr. Montgomery does not like his part,” said the 
leading lady tentatively, hanging a hand in an interminable 
white glove over the back of the stall in front of her. 

Marion’s face hardened. 

“ It ’s not a sympathetic part,” she said, “ but an artist 
ought not to think of that.” 

“No, it’s not sympathetic,” acquiesced Lenore, turning 
up her fur collar. “ It seems as if the principal man’s part 
never is sympathetic in a woman’s play. If the central 
figure is a woman, the men grouped round her are generally 
prize specimens of worms. I wonder why. In your play, 
now, Maggie ’s everything ! George does not count for 
much, as far as I can see. Even Maggie had not much 
use for him.” 

“ She loved him,” said the author, with asperity. 

“ Did she ? Sometimes when I ’m playing Maggie 

[76] 















The Understudy 

Montgomery’s George I wonder if she did. And I just 
wonder now and then if I would have thrown him over as 
she did. I mean for good and all. It seems to me — if 
she ’d cared for him, cared really , you know — ” 

“ She did,” interposed Adarion, harshly. 
u Would n’t she have quarrelled and made it up again? 
Would she have been quite so hard on him ? ” 

u Yes, she would. Think, just think what she must have 
suffered in the third act, the scene at the Savoy, when, lov- 
ing him as she did, trusting him as she did, she saw him 
come in with — ” 

u Well, I expect you know best,” said Lenore, whose 
interest seemed to flag suddenly ; cc anyhow, she suffered, 
poor thing. Women like her always do, I think.” She 
rose slowly. “ I may as well go and dress. I suppose we 
shall be here till midnight.” 

The orchestra struck up. 
u Anyhow, she suffered.” 

The violins caught up the words and dinned them over 
and over again into Marion’s ears. Women like Maggie, 
women with deep hearts like herself — for was not Maggie 
herself? — they always suffered, always suffered, always! 
— said the violins. 

The manager suddenly appeared in front of the curtain 
and walked swiftly over the little bridge from the stage to 
the stalls. He was a small, sturdy, thin-lipped, choleric 
man who looked as if he were made up of energy ; energy 
distilled and bottled. Some one had said of him that his hat 
was really a glass stopper, which might fly off at any moment. 

It was off now. There had evidently been an explosion. 
He held a note in his hand. 

[ 77 ] 















& ' 



^ 


The Hand on the Latch 

“ Montgomery has given up the part,” he said. “ He 
was odd at rehearsal yesterday. I felt there was something 
wrong. He said he had no show. Now he says he ’s too 
ill to come — bronchitis.” 

The sense of disaster which had been hanging over 
Marion all day slipped and engulfed her like an avalanche. 
She felt paralysed. 

“ Then the play can’t go on,” she said. 

u If it had to happen, better to-night than to-morrow 
night,” said the manager. “ Montgomery is as slippery as 
an eel. I don’t suppose he has got bronchitis ; but I have 
no doubt if I rushed over there at this moment, I should 
find him in bed with a steam-kettle. He would play the 
part.” 

“ What will you do ? ” gasped Marion. 

cc • he said. a Do ? There ’s only one thing to do. 
Go through with the play ! It will start in two minutes, 
and we shall see what the understudy can make of it. He ’s 
as clever as he can stick, and he ’s word perfect, at any rate.” 

cc Who is he ? ” 

“ A Mr. Delacour ; at least, that ’s his stage name. 
He ’s been in America for the last five years. Clever enough, 
but a rolling stone. He ’s not to be depended on, poor devil ; 
but it’s Hobson’s choice — we’ve got to depend on him.” 

The manager sat down beside her and clapped his hands. 

The lights suddenly burned up behind the curtain, the 
curtain rose, and the play began. 

Some plays, some books, some men and women, possess 
a mysterious force which, for lack of a better word, we call 
r vitality. Those who possess it not call it by all manner of 
ugly names. But, nevertheless, it is the great gift, the power 

1 [ 78 ] 















The Understudy 

that overcomes, which makes life on a large scale possible, 
which makes the soldier, the lover, the saint, possible. 
Most of us are only half alive. Our work is half dead. 
We deal in creep-mouse sentiment, and call it love. We 
write pathetically of our impotence to live, and call it resig- 
nation. We who have never been young compare notes 
with each other on how to remain senile and call it the art 
of growing old. 

But others go through life, and spend themselves on it, 
piece by piece, with ardour as they go. These are the 
teachers — only they never teach. They know. If we 
want to learn anything, we can watch them. And 
some of us, again — and this is the hardest fate of all — 
come into life inadequately equipped, not provisioned for a 
prolonged journey. What little we have, and what little 
there is of us, we expend on the first part of life, having 
nothing left for middle age. 

Such a woman was Marion. She had talent, and she 
had, besides — as the manager beside her had divined — 
one live play in her. But he doubted whether she had more 
than one. She looked insolvent, a dweller in the past, 
crippled by an acute memory. No doubt it was this self- 
regarding memory which had resulted in the play. It was 
obviously a personal experience, and as she was rich enough 
to share the risk of producing it, he was more than ready 
to put it on. It was full of faults ; it was melodramatic, 
it was amateurish, but it was passionately alive. The pit 
and the gallery would love it ; and if the stalls found it 
a little cheap, what of that ? He had considerable flair e. 
He believed it would succeed. 

He glanced once or twice furtively at the handsome, un- 

[ 79 ] 
















The Hand on the Latch 

happy-looking, richly furred woman beside him — no longer 
young, “past youth, but not past passion,” with much of 
the charm of youth lingering in her graceful erectness, her 
pretty hair, her delicate pallor. 

She had told him feverishly that the only thing she cared 
for — had ever cared for — was art, success, fame. He 
had heard something like it often before. 

He wished, with a half-sigh, that a little of that uneasy, 
egotistic ambition might have been instilled into the heart 
of Lenore, for whom he had a compassionate, bottled-up 
attachment of many years’ standing. 

Poor Lenore ! What an actress, and what a hopelessly 
womanly woman, still mourning the providential demise of 
an impossible brother who had lived on her. 

She was on the stage now, looking about seventeen, all 
youth and garden hat and white muslin. 

Marion’s face twitched. She was living her own youth 
over again. 

There was a pause. Lenore picked a rose to gain time, 
and looked into the wings. 

“ Delacour ! ” roared the manager, bouncing up in his 
stall and then sitting down again. 

“ We cut it here,” said Lenore, advancing to the foot- 
lights, “ and he does n’t know. It is not his fault. He ’s 
waiting for his cue. See, Mr. Delacour! Leave out that 
bit about the daisies, and come on at c happiness.’ ” 

The understudy came on, and Marion’s heart thrust 
suddenly at her like a rapier, and left her for dead, staring 
in front of her. 

This was no understudy. This was the original George 
of the drama when it was first acted. Marion saw the 
[ 8 ° ] 











That last sentence is not in the part’ ” 

(p. 81) 








£1 


The Understudy 

lover of her youth come on and kiss Lenore’s hand with 
the same gesture with which he had once kissed hers — in 
the sunshine, in a Kentish garden, beside a lavender bush, 
with a bumble-bee in it, ten endless years ago. 

He was hardly changed — a little thinner, perhaps, but 
not a day older in his paint ; the same reckless, debonair 
creature whom Marion had loved, who had wounded her 
and grieved her, whom she had discarded at last with bitter 
anger, whom she had never forgotten, whom she remembered 
with anguish. 

The curtain was down before she recovered herself, and 
the conductor was waving his baton. 

The manager turned to her with some excitement. 

u If only he can keep it up ! ” he said. “ Delacour puts 
life into the love-making. He makes love well, don’t you 
think ? ” 

41 Admirably.” 

u If only he can keep it up ! ” repeated the manager. 

Through the two acts which followed, the understudy 
kept it up. He did more. He acted with an intensity 
that made the rest of the play somewhat colourless. At 
the end of the scene at the Savoy, just before the curtain 
fell, he added a sentence of his own. 

In a second, before she knew what she had done, Marion 
had sprung to her feet, and had said in a harsh, loud voice : 

44 That last sentence is not in the part.” 

The play stopped. The hurrying waiters with dishes 
stood stock-still and gaped, as astonished as if the interrup- 
tion had been in real life. Some of the supers at the little 
tables in the background got up to see what was hap- 
pening. 

6 [8l] 















The Hand on the Latch 

Delacour, wineglass in hand, came forward to the foot- 
lights, and their eyes met. 

44 1 beg your pardon,” he said. 44 You say it is not in 
the part. I thought it was. I will omit it in future.” 

a You will do no such thing!” bawled the manager, 
leaping to his feet and shaking his fist at him. 44 Omit it ! 
Why, Miss Wright, it’s an inspiration. Gets him the 
whole sympathy just at the critical moment. And what a 
curtain ! Good God ! What a curtain ! ” 

44 Is n’t it ? ” said Lenore. u Leave out my bit at the 
end altogether, and make that the curtain. Don’t you 
agree, Miss Wright ? And, look here, Mr. Delacour, take 
the front centre here.” 

44 Start again at 4 falsehood,’ ” said the manager briskly to 
Lenore. 44 Now, then, everybody. Sit down at the back 
there. Now — ” 

The play started again. Marion, astonished at her own 
violence, ashamed, shattered by conflicting emotions, 
speechless, could only bow her approval of the change, 
not that the manager cared a pin whether she approved 
or not. 

Was Delacour acting? Marion knew that he was not. 
And as the play proceeded it changed in character. The 
words were the words she had written. Many of them 
were the words he had used himself, but his passion trans- 
formed them. They took on a new meaning. It was 
Maggie who was becoming a mean figure in spite of her 
grandiloquence — perhaps because of it. Her rigid prin- 
ciples, her petty, egotistic pride, her faultless demeanour 
jarred on the audience. Lenore, like a true artist, caught 
the novel side of the situation and emphasised it. Her 
[82] 










iTfi 7A\ Ym 7Ai r/^T7\\ 









Z& £ Understudy 

Maggie dwindled, dwindled, until the man held the stage 
alone, dominated it. Marion had never before seen his 
side of the miserable drama in which her happiness had 
made shipwreck, had never before seen her own character 
in this light. It was as if he were saying the truth at last, 
defending himself at last — which he had never done in 
real life. 

Finally repulsed, silent under her scornful invective, 
Delacour gathered himself together and went off magnifi- 
cent in defeat. 

The curtain fell for the last time. 

The tiny audience, strengthened by the rest of the cast 
who were not needed in the final scene, broke into raptur- 
ous applause. The manager, excited and radiant, clapped 
with the rest. 

w He ’s immense ! He ’s immense ! ” he kept on saying. 
u Delacour ’s the making of it. He ’s immense ! Hang 
Montgomery ! He may have bronchitis till he ’s blue. 
Delacour makes the play. I will fetch him ! ” 

He disappeared behind the curtain, and in a few minutes 
reappeared, dragging Delacour with him to introduce him 
to Marion. 

w We have met before,” she said faintly, putting out her 
hand. 

“ Did we ever really meet ? ” he said gently, taking it 
for a second in his. 

He seemed quite exhausted. Now that she saw him 
close at hand, he looked much older. And his face was 
grievously lined, deteriorated. 

She tried to thank him, to express her gratitude for the 
way he had extricated them from a great difficulty ; but 

t»3] 











her words were so hesitating and frigid that the manager 
broke in, shaking him warmly by the hand. 

Delacour bowed his thanks, murmured something con- 
ventional, and was gone. 

Every one was in a hurry to go, too. Marion remained 
a moment longer, talking to the manager, and then they 
went together through the royal box to the private entrance, 
where her brougham was waiting. Just as they reached it, 
he was called away, and an attendant let her out. 

Waiting beside her brougham, in the rain, holding the 
door for her, was Delacour, in a shabby overcoat, his hat 
in his hand. 

Again their eyes met in a long look. His, sombre, mel- 
ancholy, humble, had a great appeal in them. 

She seemed encased in some steel armour which made 
movement and speech wellnigh impossible. She thanked 
him inaudibly. 

He shut the door, said “Home” to the coachman, and 
turned away. 

The carriage drove off. 

Then something in Marion snapped. Her other self, 
the poor woman in her whom she had denied and starved 
and browbeaten, pounced upon her and called out suddenly, 
desperately : 

u Forgive him ! What is life without him ? Think of 
the last ten years ! Has there been one day in all those 
grinding years when you have not longed to see him ? Has 
there ever been one day when you would not have given 
up your ease and luxury for a cottage with him ? And now 
he has come back into your life. He still loves you. Are 
you going to lose him again ? You were vindictive, and 

[84] 












The Understudy 

you know it. Go back now and kneel down in the wet 
street and ask him to forgive you. Quick ! quick ! — 
before it is too late ! ” 

The other woman in her, the woman who had discarded 
him, stopped her ears. 

“ No, no ! I had good reasons for breaking with him. 
They hold as good to-day as ten years ago.” 

“Very well,” said the other, scornfully. “ Then never 
dare to tell yourself again that you ever loved him. Let 
that lie cease. Your love was only pretty words and pride 
and self-seeking, and a miserable streak of passion. What 
do you care what happens to him ? Don’t go back. You 
don’t care for him. You never cared. Never, never. And 
he knows it. He is telling himself so now — at this moment.” 

She stopped the brougham. She trembled so much that 
she could hardly tell the man to drive back to the theatre. 
He turned slowly, the horse evidently reluctant, and in a 
few minutes she was once more at the private entrance. 
The door was closed. No one was to be seen in the little 
cul-de-sac. The lamp over the door was out. She got out 
and rang — once, twice, and yet again. Then she realised 
that every one else had hurried away as precipitately as she 
had done, for the dawn was already in the sky. She dragged 
herself back into her carriage and drove home, shaking in 
every limb. 

After all, it did not matter. She would get his 
address from the manager first thing to-morrow and go 
straight on and see him, and sacrifice her pride, and beseech 
him to take her back. She had been too proud. She saw 
that at last. She would say so. She saw at last that resent- 
ment is disloyalty. She would say so. She was so sick of 

[85] 














^4 


The Hand, on the Latch 

present life that she would say anything. And he loved her 
still, thank God! And — thank God, too — she was rich. 
And it was obvious that he was poor. She had much to 
share with him. And she was still attractive. Other men 
still wished to marry her. She was pretty, still. All that 
she had, all that she still was, she would give him. And 
this long nightmare of the last ten years would pass at last, 
as that other nightmare of her youth had passed — her 
wretched home, with a drunken father and a heartbroken 
mother. That had passed, though at the time it had 
seemed as if it would endure for ever. Her parents had 
died, and her vulgar, kindly, rich aunt had adopted her. 
And now this second nightmare was at an end too. The 
ache would go out of her life, the long daily hunger and 
thirst would cease. There would be no more dreadful 
homecomings after evenings of amusement \ no more sick 
recoil and despair at waking and seeing the pale finger of 
the dawn upon the blind. She would be happy at last ! 

Marion cried herself to sleep that night. Next morning, as 
early as she dared, she was at the theatre. The manager was 
going through his usual paroxysm of anxiety and ill-temper 
which preceded a first night. He could hardly find time 
for a word with her. There was a hitch in the scenery of 
the last act ; the lighting was not yet repaired ; one of the 
actors of the minor parts was ill, for whom an understudy 
had not been provided ; and the head scene-shifter had 
sprained his wrist. 

“ I won’t keep you,” said Marion, as he hurried up, 
fuming ; “ I only want Mr. Delacour’s address. I should 
like to see him at once — to — to talk to him about his 
part. There are a few points — ” 

[ 86 ] 
















The Understudy 

“ Delacour’s address ? ” said the manager. “ Don’t 
know it. Oh, yes, of course ! ” He tore a little notebook 
out of his pocket. Then he suddenly looked up at her. 
“ Don’t go to him. Send for him, if you like, or see him 
here. He’ll be here in an hour — at least, he will be if 
Smith is worth his salt. I Ve bribed him to keep a lynx 
eye on him day and night, and bring him up to time. But 
don’t go and see him. I suppose you know he — ” 

u He ’s married ? ” gasped Marion. 

The manager laughed scornfully. 

“ He drinks , my dear lady. He drinks. He ’s only just 
out of an inebriates’ home. But don’t alarm yourself. If 
he’s watched, I daresay we shall manage all right. I hope 
to goodness we shall ! Don’t look so scared. Smith has 
charge of him, and he is accustomed to the job. He was 
quite sober last night. I hear he always is after an outbreak. 
You ’re going home ? Well, I think you ’re right. Yes, very 
cold here now. Quite right not to stop. See you again later.” 

Marion drove home and shut herself up in her room. 
There was no need to lock the door. She was alone in the 
world, alone in her handsome, empty house, where she had 
always been alone, even before her aunt died and left it to 
her. . . . She would always be alone now. Only yesterday 
she had hoped — what had she not hoped ! She had seen 
him there in imagination changing this weary house into a 
home, brilliant and faulty as ever, lovable as ever, beloved 
as ever, surrounded by her lavished adoration. She had 
seen their children running along its wide passages, playing 
in its empty hall. 

And now. 

He drank . 

[87] 














The Hand on the Latch 

She shuddered. She had seen drink once. She knew. 
Never while she lived would she forget what her home had 
been like. The past crowded back upon her with all its 
vileness and nausea, all its unspeakable degradation and 
violence, wrapped up with maudlin sentiment and cheap 
tears. The sweat stood on her forehead. 

What an escape she had had ! To think that if it had 
not been for that chance word of the manager’s she would 
by now have pledged herself irrevocably to a drunkard, 
waded back into the slough from which she had emerged. 
Oh, what a merciful fate it had been, after all, which had 
parted them ! How faithless she had been all these years ! 
How little she had realised how the divine love and wisdom 
had watched over her, had shielded her ! 

“ Oh ! thank God ! Thank God ! ” she groaned. The 
other self in her, the poor dying woman in her, arose on her 
deathbed and screamed to her, screamed insane things. If a 
certain voice is too long ignored, its dictates seem at last insane. 

“ Take him back all the same ! ” gasped the dying voice. 
u Marry him. Devote yourself to him day and night. 
Cure him. Set him up. You love him. Love can do it, 
if anything can.” 

“ I can’t do it,” groaned Marion. “ Mother tried, but it 
was no good.” 

“ Then do as she did, try and fail.” 

“ I can’t. He would break my heart.” 

“ Let him break it.” 

Marion strangled the terrible, urgent voice with fury, and 
then cried as if her heart would indeed break. The silenced 
voice spoke no more. 






[ 88 ] 










The Understudy 

The play was a great success. Delacour, who had 
recently returned from America, was the making of it. 
Lenore was the first to acknowledge it, though his success 
was at her expense. Her part seemed only as a foil to the 
sombre splendour of his. 

The play ran and ran. 

Delacour made no further effort to speak to Marion. He 
avoided her systematically. He, on his side, was watched, 
was spied on, was protected from himself, was never given 
a chance of yielding to temptation. His self-imposed 
gaoler loved him. He was very lovable. The manager 
was enthusiastic. Ignorant people said he was reformed. 
It almost seemed as if he might grasp the great position 
to which his talent entitled him. But how often before 
he had fallen just when he was doing well ! No one could 
depend on him. His record in America gradually became 
known. It was a record of hideous outbreaks and can- 
celled engagements. 

By dint of the strenuous will of others, to which he 
yielded himself, he was kept on his feet through the whole 
run of the play. 

And then, released from surveillance, exhausted in mind 
and body — he fell again. 

He blazed like a comet across the threatrical world and 
then set as suddenly as he had risen. 

Marion heard of it and shuddered. She had had a nar- 
row escape. 

She never wrote another play — at least, she never wrote 
another that pleased a manager. She said she had not time. 
In spite of her success, she felt a distaste for things th< 

[89] 














straws 



The Hand on the Latch 

cal. And perhaps she found that success is not as warm 
a garment for a shivering life as she had expected. There 
is a little fleecy wrap called affection, within the reach of 
all of us, which she might have donned. But, as she often 
said, there was, unfortunately, no one for whom she had 
much affection. She was alone in the world. Her interest 
in the theatre was gradually replaced by religion. Once she 
heard with real regret that Lenore had lost her memory, 
and chloral was hinted at as the cause. She thought of try- 
ing to save her, of making an earnest appeal to that better 
self which, according to Marion, exists in all of us. But 
when she made further inquiries about her, with a view to 
rescuing her, she was daunted by the discovery that Lenore 
had been privately married to Delacour for some time past, 
and that her declension, which was really due to drink, dated 
from the time of the marriage. 

A year passed. Delacour began to make fitful reappear- 
ances, then more frequent ones. He took and kept regular 
engagements. But his wife returned no more. 

Presently Marion’s own play was revived with success. 
It was one of Delacour’s greatest parts. And Marion went 
to see it, hidden behind the curtains of her box. 

The years since she had last sat in that box had not dealt 
kindly with her. Her discontented face showed that she 
was one of the many victims of arrested development, still 
hampered in middle age by the egotistic longings of youth. 
In youth we all want to receive instead of to give, to be 
loved, to be served, to be admired. Middle age is the time 
to reverse engines, the time to love, to serve, to give rather 
than to receive. Marion had not learned that elementary 
lesson of life. We all recognize them at sight, the nervous, 
[ 90 ] 
















The Understudy 

fretful faces of the middle-aged men and women who want 
to be loved. And love knows them, too, and — flies them. 

The manager, somewhat pinched and grizzled, as from a 
long fast, came in to see her between the acts, and growled 
out his disapproval of his leading lady. 

“ She ’s nothing to Lenore,” he said. 

“ Is she too ” — Marion sought for a charitable word — 
“ too ill to act ? ” 

a She is too ill to act,” said the manager. “She will 
never act any more. She is dying.” 

There was a silence. 

“ She is dying of drink,” he said ; u and if there is such a 
place as heaven, she is very near it. And if there is such a 
person as God, I hope she will say a word for me when she 
gets there.” 

Marion did not speak. She was horrified. 

“ She would marry Delacour,” said the manager. u I 
begged her to marry me. Over and over again I asked 
her. But she said I could do without her, and Delacour 
could n’t. They fell in love with each other at this very 
play when it was first put on. I saw it coming, and it 
spelt disaster for her. But it was the real thing; and when 
the real thing comes, we all. have to knock under to it. It 
does n’t come often. Most of us are quite incapable of it. I 
have only seen it once or twice. I dare say I have never 
felt it, though I should have liked to take care of Lenore, 
and not let her work so hard, and make a garden for her. 
She loves flowers and running water. I made the garden 
just on the chance, but she has never seen it. Down in 
Sussex it is, with a little old-world cottage in it. It is a 
pretty place. Pergola • small cascade with rustic bridge ; 

[91] 

















The Hand on the Latch 

fishpond, with green-tiled floor to show up the gold-fish. 
And a rose garden. I should have liked her to see it. 
But she and Delacour ! It was like a thing in a book. 
They fell in love, and he behaved well. He would n’t 
marry her. He said he knew he could n’t cure himself of 
drink — that his will was too weak. But she was deter- 
mined to marry him. She said her will was strong enough for 
both of them. 7 don’t know about her will. I think it was 
her love which was ? /ong enough. He gave in at last and 
married her. I km w I should n’t have held out as long as 
he did. And for a little while things went well. He was 
at her feet. He told me it was the first time any woman 
had ever cared for him. For a little while I almost hoped 
— and then, in spite of his love for her, in spite of every- 
thing, he began to drink again. Then she told him that 
what he drank she should drink, and she stuck to it. If he 
drank, she drank the same. If he u nipped,” she did the 
same. When he got drunk, she got drunk. It was kill or 
cure. And he loved her. That was her hold over him. 
It took time, but she broke him of it. He suffered too 
much seeing her kill herself for his sake, and it steadied 
him. He had to give it up.” 

u Then, now — why does n’t she give it up, too ? ” 

“She can’t,” said the manager, his face twitching. 
“ She was too far gone by the time he was cured. She had 
not his physique. She was absolutely played out. She is 
dying, and they both know it. But she does not mind. 
She has saved him. That was the point. She is perfectly 
happy. She does not care about anything else. He is a 
great actor. She has lived to see him recognised. Some 
women wouldn’t have risked it. But I suppose a woman 
[ 92 ] 
















The Understudy 

will take any risk if she loves ; at least, women like Lenore 
will.” 

“ And does he — in spite of this — does he love her 
still ? ” said Marion, with dry lips. 

The manager was silent. 

“ I did not think any one could care as much for Lenore 
as I did,” he said at last, u but Delacour does — he cares 




[ 93 ] 














SAINT LUKE’S SUMMER 

PART I 

When the •world ’s asleep y 
I awake and weep. 

Deeply sighing say , 

“ Come , 0 break of day , 

Lead my feet in my beloved' s way." 

Margaret L. Woods. 

W HEN first I knew Aunt Emmy I suppose she was 
about twenty-eight. I was ten, and I thought 
her old, but still an agreeable companion, infi- 
nitely pleasanter than her father and her brother with whom 
she lived. She was not my real aunt, but her father was 
my great uncle, and I always called her Aunt Emmy. 
Great Uncle Thomas and Uncle Tom were persons to be 
avoided, — stout, heavy, bullet-headed, bull-necked, throat- 
clearing men, loud nose-blowers, loud soup-eaters, who 
reeked of tobacco when it was my horrid duty to kiss them ; 
and who addressed me in jocular terms when they remem- 
bered my existence, of which I was always loath to remind 
them. With these two horrors whom she loved Aunt 
Emmy lived. She was wrapped up in them. I have actu- 
ally seen her kiss Uncle Thomas when it was not necessary, 
when he was asleep; and she admired Uncle Tom very 
much too, though she seldom kissed him, I believe by his 
wish. He used to say something about sister’s kisses being 
like cold veal. I don’t suppose he invented that himself. 
He was always picking up things like that out of a rose-col- 
oured paper, and firing them off as his own. Uncle Tom 

[94] 














Saint Luke' $ Summer 

was tall and portly and a wag out of office hours, with a 
moustache that in spite of all his efforts would not turn up, 
but insisted on making a melancholy inner semicircle just 
a size smaller than the rubicund circle of his face. How I 
hated kindly, vulgar Uncle Tom. I used to pray that he 
might die before the holidays. But he never did. I see 
now that Uncle Tom was far, far worse than Uncle Thomas, 
who had had a stroke, and was a kind of furious invalid 
who could not speak clearly or eat anything except things 
that were bad for him. But when I was a child, and first 
began to spend my holidays in Pembridge Square, I regarded 
them both with the same repulsion. 

Aunt Emmy was different. I know now that she must 
have been a remarkably pretty woman, but I did not notice 
that at the time. But a faint indefinable fragrance seemed 
to envelop her. I loved to stroke her soft white hand, and 
to turn the emerald ring on her third finger, and to lean 
against her soft shoulder. Aunt Emmy’s cheek was very 
soft too, and so was her full silky hair, which she wore 
parted all her life, though it was never the fashion to do so 
that I can remember, though I am told it is now the 
dernier cri among the debutantes. Aunt Emmy had a beau- 
tifully shaped head and the whitest brow and neck that I 
have ever seen. And she had a low voice and was very 
dignified. I do not think that she was a very wise woman, 
or that she had ever wrestled with the deeper problems of 
life, or that the mystery of pain had ever caused her faith 
to totter. But she was very good to live with. She devoted 
herself. 

She never had her own way in anything that I can re- 
member. The house never represented her. The furni- 
[ 95 ] 














The Hand on the Latch 



ture was leathern and velvet, and stout looking, the kind of 
furniture which seems to aim at being more or less exact 
moulds of the forms of middle-aged men. The armchairs 
were like commodious hip baths in plush. Aunt Emmy 
and I were lost in them. I remember once walking as a 
child through the wilderness of armchairs at Maples and 
thinking they all looked like Uncle Tom. A good deal of 
Utrecht velvet had gone to the upholstering of that house in 
Pembridge Square. It was comfortable, airless, flowerless, 
with gravy coloured walls. As I grew older I wondered 
why it was all so ugly and dreary. But I found there were 
less means than I had supposed, and though the cooking 
remained excellent, flowers and new chintzes were dispensed 
with as unnecessary. Aunt Emmy opened a window sur- 
reptitiously now and then, but Uncle Thomas and Uncle 
Tom hated draughts, and they did not get off to sleep so 
quickly after dinner if the drawing-room had been aired 
during the meal. The dining-room windows were never 
opened at all, except when Uncle Thomas was too unwell 
to come in and Uncle Tom was away. 

Many men had wished to marry Aunt Emmy — not only 
sedentary professional men in long frock coats full to the 
brim of the best food, like Uncle Tom, but nice lean, hun- 
gry looking, open-air men who were majors or country 
squires or something interesting of that kind, whose clothes 
sat well on them, and who drew up in the Row on little 
skittish curveting polo ponies when Aunt Emmy and I 
walked there. I once asked her, after a certain good-look- 
ing Major Stoddart had ridden on, why she did not marry ; 
but she only said reprovingly with great dignity, 

u You don’t understand such matters, my dear, or you 

[96] 





a 


§ 











Saint Luke' s Summer 

would know that I could not possibly leave your Uncle 
Thomas.” 

I was silenced. I felt with bitterness that this could not 
be her whole reason for celibacy, but that owing to the 
purely superficial fact that my hair was still in a pigtail she 
supposed I was unable to comprehend u lots of things ” 
that I felt I understood perfectly, and on which my mind 
was already working with an energy which would have 
surprised her had she guessed it. 

By this time I worshipped Aunt Emmy, who represented 
in my somewhat colourless orphaned existence the beautiful 
and romantic side of life. Aunt Emmy looked romantic, 
and the contrast between her refined, gentle self-efface- 
ment and the commonplace egotism of her two men was 
of the glaring nature which appeals to a young girl’s im- 
agination. 

I never forgot Major Stoddart, and when I was eighteen, 
and had left school, and was living in Pembridge Square, I 
had the good fortune to come in for the remains of a scene 
between Aunt Emmy and Uncle Tom — the very day after 
I had turned up my hair. 

It was at luncheon, to which I came in late. Uncle 
Thomas was in bed with gout, and Uncle Tom did not 
consider me of enough consequence to matter. He had 
not realized even now that I was a grown-up woman. 
Looking back after all these years, I am not sure that he 
was not astute enough to hope that I might prove an ally. 

cc What you have got to do, Emmy, is to think of the 
future,” he was saying, scooping all the visible eggs out of 
an aspic pie. “ It ’s no manner of use living only in the 
present. You think this comfortable home will go on 
7 [ 97 ] 









The Hand on the Latch 

forever, where you have lived in luxury. It won’t. It can’t. 
It ’s not in the nature of things. I saw Blackett yesterday 
(Blackett was the doctor), and he told me that if the gover- 
nor’s gout rises, and nothing he can do can keep it down, 
he won’t last more than a year at longest. In the nature 
of things,” Uncle Tom continued, bolting half an egg, “I 
shall then marry. In fact — in short — ” 

“ Has Miss Collett accepted you ? ” said Aunt Emmy, 
tremulously. 

Miss Collett was a person of means and of somewhat 
bulged attractions for those who admire size, of whom 
Uncle Tom had often spoken as a deuced fine woman. 

“ She has,” said Uncle Tom. “I made pretty sure of 
that before I said anything myself. Nothing immediate, 
you understand, but eventually — when the old governor 
goes — I don’t want to hurry him, Lord knows — but when 
the old man does pop off I shall — bring her here.” 

I looked round the room. I had seen Miss Collett, and 
the mahogany and ormolu dining-room with its great gilt 
mirrors seemed a fitting background for her. 

“I am very glad, dear Tom,” said Aunt Emmy. W I 
think you and she will be very well suited, and I am sure 
she is very lucky, though I suppose I should never think 
any one quite good enough.” 

“ Oh ! that’s all right,” said Uncle Tom. “ And as 
for the luck, it ’s all on my side.” 

He did not really think this, I knew, but it was the right 
thing to say, so he said it. 

“ But I am not thinking only of myself,” he continued. 
cc There is you to be considered.” 

Aunt Emmy dropped her eyes. 

[98] 













JO 5 


Saint Luke' s Summer 

“You mean where I shall live,” she said faintly. 

“ Just so. Just so. You speak like a sensible woman. 
We must not forget you.” Uncle Tom was becoming 
visibly uneasy. u And I may as well tell you now, old girl 
— prepare your mind beforehand, don’t you know — that 
the governor has not been able to leave you as much as he 
wished, as we both wished. The truth is, what with one 
thing and another, and nearly all his capital tied up in the 
business, and this house on a long lease and expensive to 
keep up, with the best will in the world the poor old Pater 
can't do much for you.” 

“ It will be enough,” said Aunt Emmy. 

“It will be the interest of seven thousand pounds at 
three and a half per cent,” said Uncle Tom, brutally, be- 
cause he was uncomfortable, “ about two hundred and 
thirty pounds a year.” 

“ It will be ample,” said Aunt Emmy. I knew by the 
faint colour in her cheeks that the conversation was odious 
to her. “ Dear Tom, let us talk of something else.” 

“We will,” said Uncle Tom with unexpected mental 
agility and with the obvious relief of a man who has got 
safely round a difficult corner. “We will. Now, how 
about Colonel Stoddart ? ” 

My heart beat suddenly. I was beginning to see life — 
at last. 

“ There is nothing to say about him,” said Aunt Emmy. 

“A good chap and a gentlemanly chap,” said Uncle 
Tom, urbanely, leaning back in his chair. “Eton, the 
Varsity, and all that sort of thing. Quite one of ourselves. 
Old family and a warm man. And suitable in age. My 
age. Thirty-nine. (Uncle Tom was really forty-one.) 

If’ [99] 














The Hand on the Latch 

You’re no chicken yourself, you know, Emmy. Thirty- 
eight, tho’ I own you don’t look it, my dear. Well, 
what ’s the matter with Colonel Stoddart, I should like to 
know ? ” 
cc Nothing.” 

u Well, I ’m glad to hear it, for he tells me you refused 
him again only last week. Now, look here. One mo- 
ment, please. Don’t speak. I call it Providence, down- 
right Providence,” and Uncle Tom rapped the table with 
a thick finger. u And yet you won’t look at him. I don’t 
say marry him out of hand. Of course,” Uncle Tom 
added hurriedly, u you can’t leave the old Pater while he is 
above ground. There’s no question of that. But I do 

say, give the fellow a chance. He ’s been dangling after 

you for years. Tell him that some day — ” 

Aunt Emmy rose from the table, and laid down her 

napkin. 

“Now, look here, old girl,” said Uncle Tom, not un- 
kindly. “ Don’t get your feathers up with me. Think 
better of it. You know this sort of first-class opportunity 
may not occur again. It really may not. If it is n’t Provi- 
dence, I ’m sure I don’t know what it is. And I believe 
your only reason for refusing him is because of Bob 
Kingston. Now don’t fly in the face of Providence just 
out of a bit of rotten sentiment which you ought to be 
ashamed of at your age.” 

My brain reeled. I had never heard of Bob Kingston. 
I said, cc Good God ! ” to myself, not because it was natural 
to me to use such an expression, but because I felt it was 
suitable to the occasion and to a person whose hair was 
done up. 

[ 100 ] 








mm, 






Saint Luke' s Summer 

u Tom,” said Aunt Emmy, her soft eyes blazing. cc I 
desire that you will never allude to Mr. Kingston again.” 

She left the room, and I did the same, with what I hope 
was a withering glance at the open-mouthed Uncle Tom, 
who for days afterwards interlarded his conversation with 
the refrain that he was blessed if he could understand 
women. 

But I dared not follow Aunt Emmy to her little sitting- 
room at the top of the house. She who was almost never 
alone clung, I knew, to that tiny refuge, and it was an 
understood thing between us that I might creep in and sit 
with her a little after tea, but not before. 

So I raged up and down the empty gilded and mirrored 
drawing-room, finding myself quite unable to reconcile the 
situation with my faith in a beneficent Deity, and then 
consoled myself by chronicling my tottering faith in my 
diary. I wrote a diary until I married. Then I suppose 
I became more interested in life than in recording my own 
feelings. At any rate I discontinued it. 

At last, when Aunt Emmy did not come down for tea, I 
took her up a cup. 

She was sitting in a low chair with her back to the light. 
I could see that she had been crying, but she was quite 
calm. She had a suspiciously clean pocket-handkerchief in 
her hand. Her sitting-room was a small north chamber 
under the roof, but it was the place I liked best in the 
house. On her rare expeditions abroad, before Uncle 
Thomas had become too ill to be left, she had picked up 
some quaint pieces of pottery and a few old Italian mir- 
rors. The little white room with its pale blue linen cover- 
ings had an atmosphere and a refinement of its own. It 

[ 101 ] 












The Hand on the Latch 



was spring, and there was a bunch of daffodils near the 
open window in a blue and white oil jar with Ole Scorpio 
on it. 

Aunt Emmy drank some tea, and remarked that I made 
it better than she did. 

“Your Uncle Tom has a very kind heart,” she said, 
looking a little pugnaciously at me. “It is so like him, 
just when he might naturally be taken up with his own 
affairs, to be anxious about me.” 

We each knew the other was not deceived. 

I longed to say, “ Why not marry Colonel Stoddart ? ” 

I had only seen him on horseback. I did not know how 
he looked on the ground, but I would have married him 
myself in a second if he had asked me, partly, no doubt, 
because he was a little like Lord K. . . . the hero of my 
teens, to whom I had never spoken, and partly because he 
was the exact opposite of Uncle Tom. How Miss Collett 
could! — how anybody could! — yet Uncle Tom always 
talked as if he had only to choose among the flower of 
English womanhood, and the stouter and more repellent he 
grew the more communicative and conscientious he became 
about his fear of raising expectations in female bosoms 
which he might not be able to gratify. How I scorned 
Uncle Tom when he talked like that, knowing as I did, 
but neither he nor Aunt Emmy knew I knew — it was 
always like that, they always thought I did not know things 
— knowing as I did that Miss Rose Delaine and Miss 
Wright had both refused him. I did not realise in my 
intolerant youth that the anxiety of some middle-aged 
bachelors to still appear eligible, the way their minds hover 
round imaginary conquests, has its pathetic side. Looking 

[ 102 ] 



TOMMMSmaMM 












Saint Luke's Summer 

back, I believe now that Miss Collett was not by any 
means poor Uncle Tom’s first choice, but his last chance. 
And perhaps he was her last chance too. 

“ I know father is dying. I have known it some time,” 
said Aunt Emmy, and her face became convulsed. “ He 
spoke so beautifully about it only yesterday. And I have 
known for a long time that Tom and Miss Collett were 
likely to come to an arrangement.” 

She had not a grain of irony in her, but no word could 
have been more applicable to Uncle Tom and Miss Col- 
lett than an arrangement. One felt that each had meas- 
ured the other by avoirdupois weight, and had found the 
balance even. 

u Is Uncle Thomas opposed to your marrying ? ” I 
ventured to say, with the tact of eighteen. 

u No, my dear, that is what is so wonderful. He was 
so dreadfully against it long ago — once — indeed until 
quite lately. But it ’s no use speaking of that. But now 
he is quite anxious for it, so long as I don’t leave him. 
He wants me to promise Colonel Stoddart, but to tell him 
that I could not leave my father during his lifetime, which 
of course I could n’t.” 

“ Won’t Colonel Stoddart wait ? ” I said, waxing bolder. 
I had slipped down on the floor beside her and was strok- 
ing her white hand. I hoped I was saying the right thing. 
I was adoringly fond of her, but I was also eighteen, and 
this was my first introduction to a real romance. I was 
feverishly anxious to rise to the occasion, to have nothing 
to regret in retrospect. 

u I daresay he would. I think he said something about 
it,” she said apathetically. 

[ I0 3 ] 












The Hand on the Latch 

I remembered a beautiful sentence I had read in a novel 
about confidences being mutual, and I said reproachfully, 
u Aunt Emmy, I have told you all about Lord K.; won’t 
you tell me, just me, no one else, about Mr. Kingston ? ” 

And she told me. I think it was a relief to speak to 
some one. I held my cheek against her hand all the time. 
It seemed that a sort of demigod of the name of Kingston 
had alighted in her life when she was nineteen (I felt with 
a pang that I had still a whole year to wait) and he was 
twenty-one. Aunt Emmy waxed boldly eloquent in her 
description of his unique and heroic character, shyly elo- 
quent in her dispassionate indication of his almost terrify- 
ing beauty. 

I think Aunt Emmy became a girl in her teens again 
for a few minutes, carried away by her memory and by the 
idolizing sympathy of the other girl in her teens at her feet 
in a seventh heaven at being a confidant. But in one sense, 
on the sentimental plane she had never ceased to be a girl. 
She and I viewed the situation almost from the same 
standpoint. 

“ Aunt Emmy, was he tall ? ” 

a He was, my love.” 

u And slender ? ” 

My whole life hung in the balance, 
girl’s repulsion towards stout men. 

“ He was thin and wiry and very athletic, 
rider.” 

I gave a sigh of relief. 

“Did his — it does not really matter” — (I felt the 
essentials were all right and that I must not ask too much 
of life) — “ but did his hair curl ? ” 

[ 104] 



I had all a young 


great 












St 



Saint Luke's Summer 

Aunt Emmy drew out of her bosom a little locket, hang- 
ing by a thin gold chain, with a forget-me-not in blue 
enamel on it, and opened it. Inside was a curl of chestnut 
hair. It was not tied in the shape of a curl ; it was a real 
curl. 

I looked at it with awe. 

Aunt Emmy answered my highest expectations at every 
point. I had never seen that enamel locket before. Yet I 
divined at once that she had worn it under her clothes, as 
indeed she had, day and night, for how many years ? I 
felt that I would not care how it ended, happily or un- 
happily, if only I might have a romance and a locket like 
that. 

“ He gave it me when we parted eighteen years ago,” 
she said, her voice quivering a little. 

I knew well that lovers always did part. They invari- 
ably severed, a severed for years.” I was not the least 
surprised to hear he was gone, for I was already learning 
u In the Gloaming,” and trilled it forth in a thin, throaty 
voice which Aunt Emmy said was remarkably like what 
hers had been at my age. 

u Why were you parted ? ” I asked. 

cc He had not any money, and he had his way to make. 
And he had an uncle out there who wanted him to go to 
him. It was a good opening, though he would not have 
taken it if it had not been for me ; for though he was so 
fond of horses he was not the kind of person for that kind 
of life, — sheep and things. He cared so much for books 
and poetry. And your Uncle Thomas was very much 
against my marrying at that time, — in fact, he positively 
forbade it. You see, mother was dead, and your Uncle 

[105] 
















The Hand on the Latch 

Thomas had become more dependent on me than he was 
quite aware until there was a question of my leaving him. 
Men are like w that, my love. They need a woman all the 
time to look after them and listen to their talk and keep 
vexatious things away. And he was always a most tender 
father. He said he could not bear the thought of his only 
daughter roughing it in Australia. He said he would with- 
draw his opposition if — if — Bob — Bob was his name 
— came home with a sufficient fortune to keep me in 
comfort in England.” 

u And he never did ? ” 

“ He went out to try. I felt sure he would, and he felt 
sure he would. At twenty-two it seems as if fortunes can 
be made if it is really necessary. And I promised to wait 
for him, and he was to work to win me.” 

I could not refrain from shedding a tear. It was all 
so beautiful, so far beyond anything I could have hoped. I 
pressed Aunt Emmy’s hand in silence, and she went on : 

“ But there were bad seasons, and though he worked and 
worked, and though he did get on, still you could not call 
it a fortune. And after five years had passed he wrote to 
say that he was making a living, and his uncle had taken 
him into partnership, and could not I come out to him. 
He had built an extra room on purpose for me. Your 
Uncle Thomas was terribly angry when the letter came, 
because he had always been against my emigrating, and he 
forbade any further correspondence. Men are very high- 
handed, my love, when you come to live with them. We 
were not allowed to write after that. Do you know, my 
dear, I became so distressed that I had thoughts — I actu- 
ally contemplated running away to Australia.” 

[ IQ 6 ] 












* ■&& 3 , 

Saint Luke's S zimmer 

cc Oh, why did n’t you ? ” I groaned. That, of course, 
was the obvious solution of the difficulty. 

“Very soon after that your Uncle Thomas had his 
stroke, and after that, of course, I could not leave 
him.” 

“ Could not we do it still ? ” I suggested. Of course I 
took for granted that I should be involved in the elope- 
ment, as the confidential friend who carries a little reticule 
with jewels in it and sustains throughout the spirits of the 
principal eloper. 

“ Now ! ” said Aunt Emmy, and for a moment a violent 
emotion disfigured her sweet face. u Now ! Oh, my 
child ! all this happened fifteen years ago, when you were a 
toddling baby.” 

u I wish to heaven I had been as old then as I am now,” 
I said, with clenched hands. I felt that I could have van- 
quished Uncle Thomas and Uncle Tom and all this con- 
spiracy against my darling Aunt Emmy’s happiness. 

“ And is he still — still — ? ” I ventured. 

cc I don’t know whether he is still — free. I have not 
heard from him for fifteen years. Uncle Thomas was very 
firm about the correspondence. He is a very decided char- 
acter, especially since his stroke, and I have ceased to hear 
anything at all about him since his mother died, twelve 
years ago.” 

To me twelve years ago was as in the time of Noah. 
Yet here was Aunt Emmy to whom it was all as fresh as 
yesterday. 

u When she died,” said Aunt Emmy, a she was ill for a 
long time before, and I used to go and sit with her. She 
was fond of me, but she never quite did your Uncle Thomas 
[ io 7 ] 













Z&e Hand on the Latch 

justice. When she died she sent me this ring.” She touched 
the beautiful emerald ring she always wore. u She said she 
had left it to him, and he had asked that she would send it 
to me. It had been her own engagement ring.” 

u Why don’t you wear it on your engaged finger ? ” 

“ I did at first. It was a kind of comfort to me. But 
Uncle Tom was constantly vexed with me about it. He 
said it might keep things off. He is a very practical per- 
son, Uncle Tom, — a very shrewd man of business, I’m 
told. So to please him I wear it in the daytime on my 
right hand.” 

By this time I was shedding tears of sheer sensibility. 

“I have thought of him day and night; there has not 
been a night I have not remembered him in my prayers for 
nearly twenty years. It will be twenty years next April. 
How could I begin to think of any one else now — Colonel 
Stoddart or any one ? Uncle Tom is very clever, and so is 
your Uncle Thomas, but I don’t think they have ever quite 
understood what I feel about Mr. Kingston.” 

An electric bell in a little box over the door rang in a 
furious manner. 

Aunt Emmy was on her feet in a second, smoothing her 
fair hair at the Venetian mirror. 

“Your Uncle Thomas is awake,” she said, “and is ready 
to be read to. He never likes being kept waiting.”. 

This seemed to be the case, for as she left the room the 
electric bell rang again more furiously than before, and I 
shook my fist at it. 


[!08 
















Saint Luke's Summer 


PART II 

If some star of heaven 
Led him by at even , 

If some magic fate 
Brought him , should I wait, 

Or fly within and bid them close the gate f 

Margaret L. Woods. 

T HE following year I suddenly married a soldier, the 
only young man I knew, and I knew him very 
slightly, and went out to India with him. I did 
not forget Aunt Emmy, we corresponded regularly ; but I 
was young and my life was a very full one. I had seen 
nothing of the world till I married. I had a child. The 
years rushed past, joyful, miserable, vivid, surprising, happy 
years in spite of the fact that my husband was not remark- 
ably like Lord K. in appearance, and not in the least like 
the w plaister saint ” with whom I had hurried to the altar 
on such slight provocation. 

During these years Uncle Thomas died, and Uncle Tom 
married, and Aunt Emily wrote to me that she had taken 
a little cottage in Abinger forest against her brother’s 
advice, and how in spite of his opposition — how much 
it must have cost her to oppose him — he had forgiven 
her and presented her with the most expensive mahogany 
bedstead and bedding that Maple could supply, — u so like 
him.” 

I wondered vaguely once or twice whether there had 
been any question of her marrying Mr. Kingston, but there 
was no mention of him in her letters, and I did not like to 
ask. I knew that she was very poor, but presently my 
[ I0 9 ] 













The Hand on the Latch 

heart was gladdened by hearing from her that a distant 
relation had left her a legacy, and that she was now com- 
fortably off. 

Then suddenly our life was darkened. Our child died. 
I struggled with my grief, became ill, and was sent home. 
Aunt Emmy urged me to go straight to her. She and Uncle 
Tom were my only near relations in England. He also 
offered to take me in fora time. He wrote with real kind- 
ness. He had a child himself. And his wife wrote too. 
But I need hardly say that I took my sore heart and my 
broken health straight to Aunt Emmy. 

It was late in August when I arrived. The honeysuckle 
was still in bloom on Aunt Emily’s white cottage, standing 
in its little orchard in a clearing in the forest. She was 
waiting for me in the porch, and I ran feebly to her up the 
narrow brick path between the tall clumps of hollyhocks 
and Michaelmas daisies; and she drew me into the little 
parlour and held me closely to her. And the years rolled 
away, and I was a child again, and she was comforting me 
for my broken doll. 

With the egotism of youth I fear I had not given a 
thought to Aunt Emmy’s new home until I entered it. I 
knew that she was happy in it and that it had once been a 
gamekeeper’s cottage, but that was about all. Nowadays 
everyone has a cottage. It is the fashion : and literary men 
and women, tired of adulatory crowds, weary of their own 
greatness, flee from the metropolis, and write exquisite 
articles about their gardens, and the peace that lurks under 
a thatched roof, and the simple life, lived far from shrilling 
crowds but near to nature, and very near to the Deity. 
Fortunate Deity ! 

c i 10 ] 















^4 



Saint Luke's Summer 

But in the days of which I am writing cottages and their 
floral and spiritual appurtenances were not the rage. 

I never realized until I saw Aunt Emmy in a home of 
her own how much taste she possessed or how pretty a 
cottage could be. It did not try to look like a house. It 
was just a cottage, standing amid its apple trees, now red 
with apples, with its old well half-hidden in clumps of 
lavender. The little dwelling itself, with its low ceilings 
and long oak beams, and dim colouring and quaint furniture, 
had a certain austere charm, a quiet dignity of its own. The 
sunny air came softly in through wide-open latticed windows, 
bringing with it the scent of mignonette. There had 
never been a breath of air in the house in Pembridge Square. 
O// Scorpio , that friend of my youth, looked peaceful and 
complacent in a little recess in which his soft colouring and 
perfect figure showed to great advantage against a white- 
washed wall in shadow. 

Aunt Emmy herself, in a gown of some dull white 
material, with a little grey in her rippling parted hair, seemed 
at home for the first time in her life. She looked a shade 
older, a shade thinner in the face, her sweet eyes a little 
sunk inwards. But her tall figure had retained all its old 
soft dignity and beauty of line. Looking at her as she 
poured out my tea for me, l suddenly felt years older than 
she. 

This bewildering impression deepened as the days went 
on, and a protecting, wondering compassion became part of 
my affection for her. 

During the years I had spent in India I had seen a good 
deal of both sides of that motley amazing fabric which we 
call life. I had felt the throbbing of its great loom. I had 
[in] 















The Hand on the Latch 

touched with my own shrinking hand the closeness of the 
texture, had marked the interweaving of the alien strands, 
had marvelled and been dismayed, had marvelled and been 
awed, had seen the dye of my own blood on one dim thread, 
the gold of my own joy on another. The sheltered life 
had not been mine. 

But Aunt Emmy had not moved mentally by a hair’s- 
breadth. All her expansion, if expansion it could be called, 
had taken form in her house and garden. I had not been a 
week under her roof before I found that Mr. Kingston 
occupied exactly the same position in her life as he had 
done in Pembridge Square. She had brought down her 
romance to adorn her new home just as she had brought 
down Ole Scorpio , in cotton wool. Each had their niche. 
Perhaps it was unreasonable in me to expect to find her 
different. I had not expected it. But I had become such 
a totally different person myself that her attitude to life, 
which had appealed to me as so romantic and natural when I 
was eighteen, now appeared irremediably pathetic, visionary, 
out of touch with reality. Perhaps, however, it was I who 
had become disillusioned and matter of fact. I saw with a 
kind of pitying wonder that her youthful romance still 
supplied to her, as it had done since she was nineteen, a 
certain atmosphere of pensive, prayerful resignation, a back- 
ground for ethereal day-dreams. Her peaceful days were 
passed in a kind of picturesque haze, like the mist that, 
seeming in itself a rosy light, sometimes veils a tranquil 
September sunset. 

She was evidently very happy, but it was equally evident 
that she did not know it. From words she let drop now 
and then I saw that she still imagined she was bearing the 
[ 112 ] 
















Saint Luke' s Summer 

heavy cross of her mutilated youth. But to me it seemed 
as if some tender hand had lifted it from her shoulder. 

“ Aunt Emmy/’ I said, yielding to an ignoble curiosity in 
the second week of my visit, as we were picking the lav- 
ender together, “when Uncle Thomas died I had thought 
I should hear of your marrying Mr. Kingston.” 

u I also hoped it, my dear,” said Aunt Emmy, snipping 
the lavender into a little basket, held in a loose, white-gloved 
hand. 

I dared not look at her. 

“ Mr. Kingston has not written,” she said after a mo- 
ment. 

u But did you write and tell him you were free, and still 
in the same mind ? ” 

“ I did not. I thought it might be awkward for him in 
case he were — after all these years — contemplating some 
other possibility. I did not want to embarrass him. But 
your Uncle Thomas’s death was in all the papers, and 
many of his relations are acquainted with us. I have no 
doubt the news reached him.” 

Of course it had. I had felt that it was hardly to be ex- 
pected that Mr. Kingston should have kept after twenty 
years, more than twenty years, the same vivid memory of 
his early love that she had done. His silence proved that 
he had not done so. I looked at Aunt Emmy. How 
pretty and graceful and remote she looked, and how young 
her face was under the shadow of her charming garden hat, 
tied with a soft black ribbon under her chin ! As long as 
she was not confronted with any one really young she had 
no look of age. It was difficult to believe that she was 
forty-four. And he must be forty-six. It was too late. 

[ ” 3 ] 














The Hand on the Latch 

Middle-aged marriages are risky affairs enough when the 
rubicon of forty is within sight. But when it has been 
passed — ! 

As I looked at her I hoped with all my heart that he 
would not come back to disturb her peace of mind and 
dislocate her life afresh. 

But astonishing to say he did come back ; and there was 
some adequate reason, I have forgotten exactly what, for 
his not coming earlier. At any rate, it was adequate. 

When I came down to breakfast a few days later Aunt 
Emmy held a letter towards me with a shaking hand. Her 
lips trembled. She could not articulate. 

u Am I really to read it ? ” 

She nodded. 

It was a charming letter, written in a delicate, refined 
hand. Mr. Kingston had not heard of her father’s death 
till the day before he wrote. He had been away up coun- 
try for a year, broken shoulder, etc. He was starting for 
England at once. He should travel almost as quickly as his 
letter. He should present himself at Pembridge Square and 
learn her address directly he landed. His ship was The 
Sultana. 

I took up the morning paper. 

u The Sultana arrived yesterday,” I said. 

I looked at the envelope. It was directed on from 
Pembridge Square. 

u Tom will give him my address,” said Aunt Emmy, 
faintly. cc I wonder how he knows I am not living there 
now. He will — arrive here — to-day .” 

She looked straight in front of her, through the open 
windows, to the hollyhocks basking in the still September 
[ " 4 ] 


















Saint Luke's Summer 

sunshine. A radiance lit up her face, like that which per- 
haps shone on Christian’s when at last across the river he 
saw the pearl gates of the new Jerusalem. 

“ At last,” she said. “ After all these years ! After all 
these dreadful, dreadful years.” 

An unbearable pain went through me. It was not new 
to me. I had known it once before, when I had seen my 
child sicken. Why did it return now ? 

The radiance passed. A pitiful trembling shook her like 
a leaf. Her eyes turned helplessly to mine, frightened and 
dimmed. 

“ I forgot I was an old woman,” she said. 

I kissed her hand. I told her that she was handsomer 
than any one. She was very dignified and gentle. 

u You are very kind to me, my dear, and it is sweet of 
you to feel as you do. I believe, as you say, that I am still 
nice looking. But the fact remains that it is nearly twenty- 
five years since we have seen each other. I was nineteen 
then. And oh ! I suppose I ought not to say it, but I 
was pretty. People turned to look at me in the street. 
And now I am forty-four.” 

“ But he is older than you, is n’t he ? ” 

“ Two years. What is two years ! We were the same 
age when we were young. But a man of forty-six is 
younger than a woman of forty-four.” 

I was silent. There was no contradicting that obvious 
fact. 

u He will probably come by the 4.12 train,” said Aunt 
Emmy, rising. “ If you don’t mind, as there are so many 
preparations to make, I will leave you to finish your break- 
fast. I have had mine.” 

[” 5 ] 













£4 


The Hand on the Latch 



She left the room, and I stared at her empty plate. I 
was not hungry, either. I was frightened for my dear Aunt 
Emmy. 

And yet she was so yielding, so selfless, so absolutely 
uncritical, that if any woman could marry late she was the 
woman. She could have lived with a monster of egotism 
without finding it out. Had she not devoted herself to two 
such monsters most of her life? And perhaps Mr. King- 
ston was not a monster. Aunt Emmy arranged the flowers 
early, as she only could arrange them. I was only allowed 
to fetch the water and clean the glasses. A certain pony 
cart was sent to Muddington with the cook in it to buy a 
tongue, and a Stilton cheese, and a little barrel of anchovies, 
and various other condiments which Uncle Tom approved. 
Uncle Tom’s tastes represented those of his whole sex 
for Aunt Emmy. 

I insisted on her eating some luncheon, but this was 
barely possible, as in the midst of it a telegram was brought 
in from Mr. Kingston to say he should arrive by the 4.12 
train. 

After luncheon Aunt Emmy went to her room. I fol- 
lowed her there half an hour later to give her a note, and 
found her standing in the middle of the floor looking at all 
her gowns laid out on chairs. 

“ I am afraid you can only think me very silly, my dear,” 
she said, with a sort of humble dignity. u I wished to con- 
sult you, but I did not like to ; but as you are here, and if 
you don’t mind my asking you — but a relation can often 
judge best what is advantageous — which gown do you 
think suits me best, the grey voile, or the lilac delaine, or 
the white serge ? ” 

[ n6] 



t 










Saint 

I decided on the white serge, and long before the dog- 
cart ordered to meet him could possibly arrive Aunt Emmy 
was sitting, paler than I had ever seen her, beside a wood 
fire in the parlour in the soft white gown I loved her best in, 
pretending to read. She had lit the fire, though we were not 
in the habit of having it till later in the day, because she 
thought Australians might feel chilly. 

“ I don’t know how it is,” she said at last, laying down 
the book, u but I seem quite blind. I can’t see the print.” 

I could not see the needle-work I was bending over either. 
But that was because senseless tears kept on rising to my 
eyes, do what I would. Aunt Emmy’s eyes had no tears in 
them. 

“ It is very petty of me, I know, but I do hope he has 
not grown stout,” she said presently. u But of course it is 
to be expected, and if it is so I must try to bear it. It 
could not make any real difference. Your Uncle Tom is 
the same age, and of course he is not — he really is not as 
thin as he was.” 

u Was he ever thin ? ” 

“ N-no. But Mr. Kingston was — at least not thin, 
but very spare and agile-looking.” 

At last the sound of wheels reached us. Aunt Emmy 
clasped the arms of her chair convulsively. 

u I daresay he has not come,” she said almost inaudibly. 

The wheels stopped. I went into the tiny hall. 

A tall, spare, distinguished-looking man with a weather- 
beaten face and peculiarly intent, hawklike eyes was at the 
gate, and I went out to greet him. As he took off his cap 
his crisp hair showed a little grey in it. He was delightful 
to look at. 

[” 7 ] 















The Hand on the Latch 

I don’t know what I said, but I mumbled something as 
I shook hands with him and pointed to the parlour door. 
He nodded gravely and went in, hitting his tall head against 
the low lintel. Then he closed the door gently, and I 
went to my room and locked myself in. 

When I went into the parlour an hour later at tea-time 
I found them sitting one on each side of the fire. I wished 
with all my heart that they could have been sitting together 
at this moment after the marriage of their daughter. Both 
had cried a little I could see. He certainly had. They 
got up when I came in and stood together on the hearth, — 
a splendid-looking couple, dwarfing the white room with 
its low ceiling. 

What they must have been in youth I could well 
imagine. 

I was reintroduced to him, and I am not sure, though 
they were both smiling at each other, that they were not 
relieved by my entrance with the tea. He handed her her 
cup and waited on her with the deferential awkwardness of 
a man who has not been in women’s society for years. 

“ I am a rough fellow, Emmy,” he said once or twice. 
But he was not rough. He was charming. He did not 
fit in at all with my preconceived ideas of cc Colonials.” 
And it was quickly evident to me that his tender admiration 
of Aunt Emmy still survived. I was partly reassured. Per- 
haps, after all, he had brought happiness with him. 


Saint Luke’s summer was glorious that year, and it 
was nowhere more wonderful than in the forest. One still 
golden day followed another, the gossamer-threaded sun- 
[ 1 1 8 ] 





Nzj, ssjj kuj w) \kJi vvj 1 1 \j) kuj v \ij) ssjj \yjj w\\:;jxk 7 j \xjj \zyjwj \\sr\sLzrvLJj iw/wvy 










Saint Luke' s Summer 

shine flooding the glades of yellowing and amber trees, 
spilling itself headlong amid the rusting bracken, and losing 
itself in the tiny foliage of the whortleberry, which, all its 
little oval leaves ruddy as a robin’s breast, was imitating the 
trees, like a miniature autumn forest underfoot. 

Aunt Emmy and Mr. Kingston walked daily in the 
marvel of the forest, and it seemed as if the autumn sun 
shone kindly on them. Sometimes on her return there was 
a bewildered look in her face which I did not understand, 
and I wondered whether indeed all was well, but I put the 
thought away, for his love for her was beyond the possi- 
bility of doubt, and had not her love for him coloured her 
whole life ? 

And yet — 

Once I saw him take up Ole Scorpio with a careful 
hand and then replace it in its recess with its spout point- 
ing towards the room. Presently, when he had gone, she 
gently moved it back to its former position, exactly en profile , 
and the senseless idea darted through my mind as I watched 
her do it that if her romance were moved from its niche 
she would instinctively wish to do the same, — to readjust 
it to the angle from which she had looked at it so long. 

As the days passed and the first shyness between them 
wore off, the primitive life he had led for so many years 
showed itself in a certain slowness of speech, a disinclina- 
tion to make acquaintance with the neighbours, and an 
increasing tendency to long, tranquil silences with a pipe in 
the garden. But, wonderful to say, it had not apparently 
blunted him mentally ; and he actually cared for books. 
Unfortunately there were almost no books in the cottage, 
How he had kept it 1 cannot imagine, but he certainly had 
[ " 9 ] 













The Hand on the Latch 

retained a quickness of apprehension which made him half 
unconsciously adapt himself to Aunt Emmy and her little 
habits in a way that astonished me. It was she who showed 
herself less perceptive as regarded him. But this she never 
divined. She had got it rooted into her small, graceful 
head that he would naturally wish to converse principally 
about his farm. And in spite of scant encouragement she 
continually “ showed an interest,” as she herself expressed 
it, in sheep and water creeks, and snakes and bush fires. 
He was always perfectly good-natured and ready to answer, 
but I sometimes wondered how it was she did not realise 
that she asked the same question over and over again. 

“Uncle Bob does not seem to care to talk much about 
his farming,” I ventured one day. “ Perhaps he wishes to 
forget it for a little while.” 

“ My dear,” said Aunt Emmy, rebukingly, “ when you 
are as old as I am you will know that the only thing men 
really care to talk of is their business. My dear father 
always talked of stocks and shares and — and — bonuses. 
He said I could not understand about them, as indeed I 
could not, but it interested me very much to listen. And 
your Uncle Tom, as you may remember” — I did indeed 
— cc did the same. It is natural that Mr. Kingston’s mind 
should dwell on agricultural subjects.” 

Presently wicked men began to mow the bracken with 
great scythes and to carry it away in carts which tilted and 
elbowed their way down the mossy, heather-fringed tracks. 
Here and there the down-stretched arms of the firs caught 
the topmost fronds of bracken, and swept them from their 
murdered brethren, and held them precariously suspended, 
only to drop them when the first wind went by. 

[ 120 ] 














Saint Luke' s Summer 

I left the cottage for a week to visit my husband’s rela- 
tions, and when I returned the forest was bare. An unde- 
finable sadness seemed to brood over it and to have reached 
Aunt Emmy as well. Mr. Kingston had also been away 
to visit his relations and had returned, and was staying at 
the little inn on the edge of the forest, from which he could 
more readily run up daily to town to have his shoulder 
massaged which still troubled him. 

Aunt Emmy told me all this in her garden where she 
was dividing her white pinks. I knew she intended to 
make a fresh border, but the action filled me with con- 
sternation. 

“But, Aunt Emmy,” I said, the foolish words jolted out 
of me by sudden anxiety, “ will you — will you be here 
next spring ? ” 

I could have struck myself the moment the words were 
out of my mouth. 

The trowel dropped from her hand. 

“ Oh, no ! ” she said confusedly. u Neither I shall. 
I was forgetting. I shall be in Australia.” 

She looked round the little garden which she had made 
with her own hands, and back to the white cottage, up to 
its eyes in Michaelmas daisies, which had become such an 
ideal home, and in which, poor dear, she had taken a deeper 
root than she knew, and a bewildered pain passed for a 
moment over her face. It was as if she had been walking 
in her sleep and had suddenly come in contact with some 
obstacle, and had waked up and was not for the first mo- 
ment certain of her surroundings. 

u He is more to me than any cottage,” she said, recover- 
ing herself with a little gasp. “ I had hoped, perhaps, he 
[ 121 ] 










The Hand on the Latch 


would have come and lived here, and let me take care of 
him after all his years of hard work. But it was a selfish 
idea. He has told me that he cannot leave his work or his 
uncle who has been so kind to him, and who is very infirm 
now — partially paralysed, and needing the greatest care. 
I shall — let the cottage.” 

u What is the place in Australia like ? ” I said with 
duplicity, for of course I knew by this time exactly what 
it was like. But I wanted to change her thoughts. 

She led the way indoors and pointed to a sheaf of un- 
mounted photographs. I took them up and examined 
them as if for the first time. My heart sank as I looked at 
the inoffensive figure of the poor old uncle in the verandah, 
whom Aunt Emmy was of course to nurse. The house 
which that hard-working old man had built himself stood 
nakedly upon a piece of naked ground. There was not a 
tree near it. Beyond were the great cattle yards and farm 
buildings and what looked like an endless shrubless field; 
and on the right was the new two-windowed room, no longer 
very new, which Mr. Kingston had built seventeen years ago 
for Aunt Emmy. I knew how much labour that hideous 
addition meant, which was a sort of degraded cousin many 
times removed from the pert villa drawing-rooms, peering 
over Portugal laurels on the road from Muddington. I 
knew that Mr. Kingston had papered and painted that 
room with his own hands. I knew also, but Aunt Emmy 
did not, that he had repapered and repainted it several 
times while it waited for her. And yet by no wildest 
effort of the imagination could I picture Aunt Emmy living 
there, though her heart had been there all her life. 

A sudden rage rose within me against the deceased 

[ 122 ] 













Saint Luke' s Summer 

Uncle Thomas, and against this other decrepit uncle, 
waiting to be nursed. 

I laid down the photographs, and went a turn in the 
forest, leaving Aunt Emmy sitting idle in her gardening 
gloves. My foolish words had stopped her happy activity. 
I was angry with myself, with Fate, with Australia, with 
everything, and not least with Mr. Kingston. 

Everywhere in the bare glades little orphaned families of 
bracken held their arched necks a few inches from the 
ground. Even in their bereavement they too had remem- 
bered that it was autumn and their tiny curled fronds pro- 
tecting their downcast faces were golden and ruddy. As I 
turned a corner I suddenly caught sight of Mr. Kingston a 
few paces from me looking earnestly at one of these little 
groups. I did not want to meet him just then, and I half 
turned aside, but he had already seen me, and he gave a 
gesture of welcome and I had to stop. 

My anger subsided somewhat as he came up. He looked 
harassed and as if he had not slept. 

“ And so you are back,” he said. “ I was just wishing 
that you were at the moment I caught sight of you. If 
you think it possible that a word or two could be dragged 
out of such a silent enigmatical person as yourself I should 
like to have a little talk with you.” 

I could not help liking him. His keen eyes were kindly 
though his face was grave. 

u What do you want to talk about ? ” I said bluntly. 

w What an unnecessary question. What can I want to 
talk about except Emmy ? ” 

I was silent. I felt more uncomfortable about the whole 
affair than I had done yet, and that was saying a good deal. 

[ I2 3 ] 


















The Hand on the Latch 

Mr. Kingston led the way down a little track to a place 
where the trees grew so close together that the murderous 
scythes had not been able to get in among them. Here the 
bracken had been unmolested, and was going unharassed 
through all its most gorgeous pageant. Great fronds of 
ivory white, of palest gold, of brownest gold, of reddest 
gold upreared themselves among the purple waves of the 
heather, wearing the stray flecks of the sunshine-like jewels 
on their breasts. We sat down on a fallen tree round which 
the bracken had wrapped its splendour. 

“ How extraordinarily beautiful it is,” he said more to 
himself than to me, putting out his long, artistic hand, 
gnarled and hardened with work, and touching a pale frond 
with a reverent finger. cc I am glad to have seen it once 
more. It is twenty-five years since I have seen an English 
autumn.” 

There was a moment’s silence, and then he went on 
without any change of tone : 

u And you are thinking, you sad-faced downright little 
woman who are so afraid that I am going to make your 
dear Aunt Emmy unhappy, you are thinking that you did 
not take a precarious seat on this trunk in order to hear a 
possible enemy descant on the beauties of nature.” 

I was astonished at his penetration. My own experience, 
gleaned entirely from the genial little egoist whose wife I 
was, had taught me that men never noticed anything. I 
had had no idea that I had shown the fear of him which 
I felt. 

“ And yet you are my only possible ally,” he went on ; 
“ my only helper, if you are willing to help me in the 
somewhat difficult task which I have in hand.” 

[ I2 4 ] 
















Saint Luke's Summer 

“ You mean marrying my aunt ? ” I said. 

“ No,” he said, looking at me with a kindness which 
made me ready to sink into the ground with shame, u I 
can do that without assistance. Emmy, God bless her, has 
been ready to marry me any time this twenty-five years, and, 
poor soul, she is ready now. She has not the faintest idea 
what she would be in for if she did, but she is ready to 
risk it.” 

I was silent. I was bewildered for one thing, and I did 
not want “ to put my foot in it ” again immediately for 
another. And there was really no need for me to speak, 
for he went on slowly, looking full at me : 

“ What I have to do if I can is to save Emmy’s romance 
for her.” 

I could only stare at him. 

w For twenty-five years,” he went on, “that dear woman 
has lived on her love for me. It has coloured her whole life. 
I know what I know. It has been her support in all the 
endless years she nursed that cruel old egoist her father, who 
would not let her marry me, when we could have married 
seventeen years ago. But it is not me that she wants now, 
tho’ she did want me for many years ; it is the thought of 
me — if you can’t understand without my saying it I can’t 
make you — it ’s her romance which is important to her, and 
which I want to keep — at all costs.” 

a My darling Emmy,” he said, and there were tears in his 
hawk eyes, “ the most unselfish and devoted, the sweetest, 
the humblest, and the most beautiful creature I have ever 
known. And she has given up everything out of constancy 
to me, home, children, everything, no, not for me exactly, but 
for a dream, for an ideal, for something of which I was to her 
[ I2 5 ] 
















The Ha n d on the Latch 

the symbol, but which I no more resemble than I resemble 
that frond of bracken.” 

He turned his face away. 

“ It would have been all right if they would have let us 
marry when we were both still young and I had got a home 
together,” he went on, a but now it would be inhuman to 
root her out of her little home and drag her across the 
world, and try to transplant her into my rough place. How 
rough it is I see now that I have been back in England. I 
did not know it was so uncouth when I lived in it. It’s 
the only life I ’m accustomed to, the only life I ’m lit for 
now, tho’ it was sorely against the grain at first. I don’t 
think I could have stuck to it except for the hope of marry- 
ing her some day. But I see now the only life I ’m fit for 
is not fit for her. And I can’t give it up. I can’t desert 
my poor old uncle who is growing infirm and depends on 
me entirely.” 

“ Why did you come back ? ” I groaned. 

u I came back,” he said, u because I have cared for her 
and worked for her all my life. And because I heard that 
her beast of a father had left her almost penniless, and that 
fat Tom had married and turned her out. And until I saw 
her again from day to day I did not realise the nature of 
her feeling for me. I came back to offer her what I had, 
not that it was much, hoping to marry her, and take her 
back with me. . . . But that is not what would make my 
Emmy happy now . What she needs is to go on in this 
perfect little doll’s house, this little haven, thinking of me, 
and praying for me, and tending her flowers, and mourning 
like a dove in its tree because we are parted.” 

It was exactly what Aunt Emmy needed. I could not 
[126] 






XI 07 







v J 


Saint Luke' s Summer 

have put it into words, but this strange man had done 

SO. 

“ You will not speak,” he said, u but you agree with me 
for all that. I had to make sure you agreed. Your confir- 
mation is all I wanted, and now I have it.” 

It was not that I would not speak. I could not speak. 
I was thinking of the room in that horrid wooden house 
which he had built for her. 

After a few minutes he went on quietly : 

“ I think the thing for me to do is to be ruined, only 
partially of course, not enough to make her miserable, and to 
hurry back to Australia without her at once for the time 
being, and from there to write regularly by every mail, nice 
letters, they cannot be forbidden now ; but never to come 
back any more. A bank has just failed in Australia in 
which I had money. The situation can be arranged.” 

I looked away from him. 

“ I owe it to her,” he said. 



THE END 































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